Foreign tourists spend record ¥4.5 tril in Japan in 2018

Japan is a safe country to travel

Tourists are treated well.

The food is great, the cultural spots still beautiful in their uniqueness

The shopping is terrific.

People in today's world want a safe and joyful value for their bucks - -and Japan offers that.

The figure was calculated under a new method with more samples. 

Intnink they mean the figure is fudged and padded in a new method. How is it even possible to calculate this number? If it is calculated on duty free goods only it would give a more accurate account, but most of this is just a padded guess.

Dont forget this is all tax free. Japanese will be paying 10% but tourists pay nothing.

With all this revenue, how about not raising the consumption tax for the hard working Japanese that make it possible for all those tourist to enjoy Japan. Let us hard working tax payers enjoy a little down time spending as well.

See, you need more Aussies in japan. Fair dinkum!

@Insane Wayne

Dont forget this is all tax free. Japanese will be paying 10% but tourists pay nothing.

Most of it is not tax free. Tourists pay taxes on everything except for shopping within the tax-free program. As shopping in total is listed as 34.7% of total spending, and some of that shopping will still be subject to taxes, that's a lot of tax being paid.

Consumption tax on food, airport taxes, hotel taxes, onsen taxes, and now the departure tax.

Which is why we need the departure tax.  Utter scam.

As for tourists pay no tax, just not true.

Anyway, unless you spend huge amounts here omn items in the tax free programmme, not everyone can be bothered to stand in the queue at the airport to claim pennies back.

My biggest issue is Asian tourists leaving their low quality travel luggage all over the neighborhood after buying new luggage in Japan.

Some neighborhoods are littered with discarded luggage near the travel lodges and guest houses.

It is a fantastic place to travel (and live), and I just hope some remember the fact that these tourists are helping the Economy when they complain about "too many tourists", etc.

That's a lot of money coming from us foreigners. It shows how much Japan appreciates us .

Wow, what a concept.

Foreign visitors bring in money to Japan.

Now imagine if Japanese nationals also traveled around Japan freely at reasonable rates all year round. Not during Golden Week or Obon only at inflated prices. The economy would be even better than it is!

It's too bad, its much cheaper to travel abroad than it is to do it domestically. What if.........

“By far the largest spend was from Chinese tourists” - who from my own experience of Tokyo in 2018 were loud, obnoxious and mostly responsible for a 20% rise in prices as Japanese merchants cashed in. There was a noticeable downturn in Japanese hospitality and gaijin curiosity too, as if the population were gaijin weary and simply doing their best to endure the gaijin hoard for the sake of the Japanese economy. In many Tokyo neighbourhoods I thought Chinese had replaced Japanese as the national language and an extra 9 million per year to 2020 will make things unbearable for many of the local population.

Every once in a while it's pleasant to come across articlers like these where foreigners play a mjor role in Japan's economy.

$41.5 billion and immigration wants 1000 yen per head?

Dont forget this is all tax free. Japanese will be paying 10% but tourists pay nothing.

The majority is taxable, in addition to the income taxes on profits generated among Japanese businesses serving tourists (hotels, electronics retailers, transport companies, restaurants...).

Lol... what is it, like 2 decades of stagnant economy, now suddenly there is this windfall of money flowing into the country and Debby Downer 1981 thinks this is unfair to the "hard working" Japanese who are footing the bill... I suppose if you equate time logged and obligated time to be in office to be representative of hard work. I believe others have pointed out that tax-payers do not foot the bill for all the "freeloaders".