Photo/Illutration Visitors inundate the Nakamise shopping street in Tokyo’s Asakusa district on Jan. 8. (Yosuke Fukudome)

Pedestrian traffic near some of the nation’s busiest landmarks expanded markedly on Jan. 8, the start of a three-day weekend, compared with this time last year, despite surging cases of the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus over the past week.

The only exception was a major shopping street in Naha, Okinawa Prefecture, which is in the grip of a record Omicron outbreak.

Foot traffic between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. that day was 63 percent larger in Tokyo’s Asakusa district than on the first day of three consecutive holidays in 2021, which fell on Jan. 9.

A 45 percent increase was observed near Tenjin Station in Fukuoka, which was 22 percent smaller than in 2020. The figure for the area close to Shinjuku Station in Tokyo was 38 percent and 32 percent in the Arashiyama district of Kyoto.

In the Kokusai-dori district in Naha, the figure fell 7 percent.

The numbers are estimates based on global positioning data from users of NTT Docomo Inc. smartphones.

Koji Wada, a professor of public health at International University of Health and Welfare in Tochigi Prefecture, urged the public to continue to thoroughly practice basic safety protocols, including wearing masks and staying away from crowded venues.

“People need to understand that we are now fighting Omicron, which is exceedingly contagious and completely different from previous strains,” he said. “As data on the past week showed, there are growing fears of a possible shutdown of society, as well as the health care and nursing care systems, if new cases jump over the short-term.”

Compared with the same period on Jan. 11, the first day of the three consecutive holidays in 2020, crowds this year were 15 percent smaller near Shinjuku Station, one of the nation’s busiest, as well as in the Asakusa district, a perennially popular tourist spot because of the spectacular Sensoji temple.

Pedestrian traffic in the area close to Nagoya Station, a major rail hub, was 2 percent larger, compared with 2021, but 32 percent smaller than in 2020.

The Arashiyama district saw a drop of 27 percent from 2020.

In the area around Nankai Electric Railway Corp.’s Namba Station in Osaka, foot traffic was up 26 percent from 2021, but down 20 percent from 2020.

The Kokusai-dori street saw a drop of 32 percent from 2020.

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