Photo/Illutration “Yamahoko” floats parade along Oike-dori street in Kyoto’s Nakagyo Ward during the Ato Matsuri (latter festival) session of the Gion Festival on July 24, 2022. (Kenta Sujino)

The Japan Tourism Agency will subsidize 139 travel packages that offer foreign tourists “special experiences,” including pulling floats in Kyoto’s Gion Festival and being the lord of an entire castle.

The programs were developed in hopes of attracting affluent overseas travelers.

Private businesses, local governments and other parties submitted about 1,000 proposals to the JTA.

The agency had called for tours and events that draw on natural features, cultural properties, traditional performance arts and other resources available only in Japan.

The JTA on March 28 picked 139 of the proposals based on their novelty. They will each receive between 11 million yen and 27.5 million yen ($83,000 and $207,000) in subsidies.

They will be available starting next February at the latest.

Many of the programs feature festivals.

The Kyoto City Tourism Association, for example, plans to allow visitors to join a procession of “yamahoko” floats during the famed annual Gion Festival.

The Sapporo Tourist Association will offer a tour that includes building ice sculptures on the Hitsujigaoka Observation Hill during the annual Sapporo Snow Festival.

Other plans feature gastronomy.

One program will allow participants to enjoy original dishes from first-rate chefs in private rooms and attend a Buddhist service at Ninnaji temple in Kyoto.

A similar plan cost 275,000 yen per venue when it was marketed to domestic customers last year by ELternal, a provider of consulting services to Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples.

In a separate tour in Asuka, Nara Prefecture, participants will visit the Kitora Tumulus at night and then be treated to a dinner evocative of the court cuisine of the Asuka Period (592-710), when the famous burial mound was built.

Kinki Nippon Tourist Co. will offer a plan that includes booking all of Hikone Castle in Hikone, Shiga Prefecture, at night so participants will feel like lords of the fortress.

A winter tour provides a helicopter ride to Mount Zaozan, which straddles Miyagi and Yamagata prefectures, for a view of “juhyo” ice monsters, or frost-covered trees, and of the Okama crater lake.

The government has set a target of increasing annual spending by foreign tourists in Japan to 5 trillion yen at an early date. It is focused on well-off travelers who spend at least 1 million yen each during a single Japan visit.

The JTA on March 28 also released a list of 11 model sightseeing areas, from “east Hokkaido” in the northeast of Japan to “Okinawa and Amami” in the southwest, to push development of tourism resources for wealthy people.

Agency officials hope that brand development efforts in those areas will attract foreign visitors to Japan’s countryside, which the JTA sees as a key challenge.

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