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| Above, Osaka Castle. Photo by Armand Vaquer. |
If there ever was a good reason why nations should welcome foreign visitors, here's one.
From The Japan Times:
Foreign tourists in Japan spent a record ¥4.81 trillion ($43.6 billion) in 2019 in line with a continued increase in visitors, government data showed Friday.
Their spending rose 6.5 percent from 2018, increasing for the seventh consecutive year, the Japan Tourism Agency said in a preliminary report.
The number of foreign visitors marked an all-time high of 31.88 million last year, but the margin of growth slowed to 2.2 percent from 8.7 percent in 2018 as South Korean tourists dropped sharply due to a deterioration in bilateral ties, the agency said.
Visitors from South Korea fell 25.9 percent to 5.58 million.
Bilateral relations have soured since South Korean court rulings ordered Japanese firms in October 2018 to compensate for wartime labor during Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula between 1910 and 1945.To read more, go here.
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