Photo/Illutration Foreign visitors walk down a shopping street in the Toyosu fish market in Tokyo's Koto Ward on April 17. (Akihito Ogawa)

More than 17.7 million foreign visitors came to Japan from January through June this year, a record high for the first half of a year.

The Japan National Tourism Organization announced on July 19 that the figure totaled 17,777,200 for the six-month period. 

The JNTO also announced that the number for June alone was 3,135,600, exceeding 3 million people for the fourth month in a row. The weak yen is boosting the trend.

The Japanese government aims to attract even more foreign tourists annually than in 2019, which totaled 31.88 million inbound visitors, by 2025.

If the current trend continues, the number will exceed that goal and reach 35 million by the end of this year.

Tourists from China, which accounted for 30 percent of the foreign visitors to Japan before the COVID-19 pandemic, have not yet returned to their pre-pandemic numbers.

However, tourists from South Korea, Taiwan, the United States and other countries have boosted the overall figure.

The JNTO also said that foreign visitors to Japan during the first six months of this year spent 3.9 trillion yen ($24.80 billion), which is also a record high for the first half of a year.

Each tourist spent 225,000 yen in Japan on average during that period. If this trend continues, foreign visitors will spend nearly 8 trillion yen in the country by the end of this year.

Related News