Travel demand and personal consumption are recovering after Japan downgraded the severity level of COVID-19, but lifestyle changes due to the pandemic continue to drag down some sectors.

People waited in line for more than 90 minutes at the Shinjuku Passport Center in the Tokyo metropolitan government building on June 7.

The center received 22,605 applications for passports in May, a 2.6-fold increase from the same month last year, according to Tokyo’s passport department.

Travel agency giant JTB Corp. said overseas travel reservations for the third and fourth weeks of May remained at less than 30 percent of the numbers in 2019 but were the highest since the pandemic started.

Overseas travel reservations for the period between July 15 and Aug. 31 are 202 times higher than the same period last year.

Domestic travel reservations for the summer period are up 2.5-fold from the same period last year.

Beer shipments of the four largest breweries for business use in May increased by nearly 20 percent year-on-year, according to sources.

Sales were particularly strong for draft beer barrels for restaurants, as well as bottled beers served in hotels and wedding halls.

The restaurant reservation site “Grunavi” said the number of bookings in May rose by 40 percent compared to the same month of 2019, before the pandemic struck.

JCB and data analysis company Nowcast Inc. released the JCB Consumption Now index, which reflects consumer spending based on credit card use.

The overall index for the first half of May increased by 9.3 percent compared with the average from fiscal 2016 to 2018. It rose 0.9 point from the latter half of April.

“With the change to the COVID-19 classification, conditions for using the government’s travel subsidy program have been relaxed, leading to a rise in travel spending,” Kota Nakayama of Nowcast said. “Restaurant sectors are also growing, likely due to the easing of restrictions on activities.”

IZAKAYA, KARAOKE STRUGGLES

However, the pace of recovery varies by sector.

Consumption is higher than pre-pandemic levels in 13 of 33 sectors in the JCB Consumption Now index. The 13 sectors include convenience stores, family restaurants and movie theaters.

The remaining 20 sectors have not fully recovered.

Even “izakaya” pubs that are gaining momentum still stand at 70 percent of pre-pandemic performances, and karaoke parlors remain at 30 percent.

In the service sector, amusement parks, movie theaters and hair salons are doing well, while hotels are struggling.

The Asahi Shimbun used data of SoftBank Corp. subsidiary Agoop Corp. to compare the movement of people over the week through May 31 with the same period in 2019.

It learned that the flow of people in major downtown areas reached around 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels, including 88 percent in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward, 90 percent in Nagoya, 92 percent in Osaka’s Umeda district and 87 percent in Fukuoka city’s Tenjin district.

An expert said the change in people’s behavior during the pandemic has led to the poor performances of izakaya pubs and karaoke parlors.

“It is believed that demand for large afterparties at night has dropped,” said Sayaka Azuma, a food service senior analyst at NPD Japan Ltd., which conducts research on the dining market.

Changes in workstyles, such as remote working, are also affecting businesses.

“The number of people buying commuter passes in the Kanto region has stabilized at an average of around 20 percent less compared to that of the pre-pandemic level,” Kazuyuki Harada, head of the Japan Private Railway Association, said at a news conference in late May.

“We expected such problems due to the declining birthrate and aging population, but it came much earlier (because of the novel coronavirus),” he said.

INFECTIONS NOT RAPIDLY SPREADING

New cases of COVID-19 in Japan have been gradually rising since early April, but a rapid surge in infections has not occurred since COVID-19 was downgraded to the same category as seasonal influenza.

The number of reported infections at regularly monitoring medical institutions over the week through May 28 was 17,864, or 3.63 patients per institution. That was a 1.02-fold increase from the previous week.

The largest number was seen in Okinawa Prefecture, at 10.35 patients per institution.
In heavily populated prefectures, Tokyo had 3.96 patients per institution, Aichi had 4.76, Osaka had 2.75 and Fukuoka had 3.08.

The patient number increased in 25 prefectures from the previous week.

(This article was written by Akifumi Nagahashi, senior staff writer Toru Nakagawa, Kentaro Uechi, Go Takahashi and Yusuke Nagano.)