WTTC: Japan Tourism Recovering Faster Than Expected

Above, Harajuku Station in Tokyo. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

There's some good news for the Japanese tourism industry.

Breaking Travel News.com posted:

The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) has announced the launch of the third of four quarterly reports into the recovery of the Japanese tourism industry following the Tohoku Tsunami earlier this year.

According to the report – officially entitled The Tohoku Pacific Earthquake & Tsunami: Impact on Travel & Tourism - Update December 2011 – the tourism industry in the country has rebounded strongly in the second half of 2011 and more rapidly than previously expected.

In the World Travel & Tourism Council’s second Japan report in September 2011, analysis of tourism data showed the recovery was in line with the low impact scenario, and more recent analysis shows that domestic and outbound tourism is now back to pre-March 2011 baseline, with inbound well on the way to recovery.

Inbound travel has yet to fully recover and for 2011 as a whole, foreign visitor arrivals are expected to be around 25 per cent lower than in 2010.

Arrivals continue to be in line with previous WTTC low impact scenario, which states that international tourist arrivals will recover in numbers by early 2012.

This is good news for businesses who cater to the tourism market in Japan. The March 11 earthquake and tsunami along with radiation fears caused a big drop in foreign tourists to Japan.

To read the full article, go here.

Ten Years Gone In A Flash (Almost)

Right, Armand at the 2001 Tokyo International Film Festival. Photo courtesy of Clawmark Toys.

Besides being Halloween, today marks ten years since I first stepped aboard a jet and headed off for Japan with an arrival on November 1 (Japan is 17 hours ahead of Los Angeles time and the International Dateline is crossed in the mid-Pacific). Until then, all my flying had been on domestic flights.

Before heading off for Japan again (most likely next spring), there is one thing I have to do: renew my passport. Passports are valid for ten years and mine expired back on September 16. It will be interesting to receive the new passport once I renew it and see what changes have been made to them by the government. In a way, I'm going to miss using the old passport with all its stamps, including ones from different tourist attractions in Japan that had rubber stamps for tourists to stamp their passports with.

It is interesting to see pictures of one's self of ten years ago. My hair was thicker and darker (i.e., less grey) and my mustache was darker. I was also about 50-60 pounds heavier than I am now (which is a good thing).

Above, the Nijubashi Bridge at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.

Some of the stamped places and attractions of Japan in my passport include: Harajuku Station, Mt. Fuji Visitor Center, JR Miyajima Island Ferry, Inaricho Station (Tokyo), Hiroshima Cenotaph (for A-bomb victims), Lucky Dragon No. 5, Mt. Aso Volcano National Park, Fukuoka Tower and others (some are in Japanese with no picture, and I don't remember what they were from).


Right, Armand with the Godzilla statue in Hibiya. Photo by Richard Pusateri.

It has been an interesting ten years. Some good things happened, and some not-so-good things happened. But that's life. All in all, it has been a pretty good ten years.

I am looking forward to getting the new passport and getting it filled up with new stamps.