{"id":15661,"date":"2023-04-19T08:04:11","date_gmt":"2023-04-19T08:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/japan-visitors-reach-post-covid\/"},"modified":"2023-04-19T08:05:10","modified_gmt":"2023-04-19T08:05:10","slug":"japans-march-visitors-at","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/japans-march-visitors-at\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan&#8217;s March visitors at post-COVID high, lured by cherry blossoms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TOKYO (Reuters) &#8211;     Visitors to Japan surged in March to their highest after the COVID-19 pandemic, official data showed on Wednesday, with overseas tourists flocking to see the nation&#8217;s famous cherry blossoms for the first time in four years as travel curbs eased.<\/p>\n<p>The number of foreign visitors for business and leisure stood at 1.82 million in March, up from 1.48 million in February, the Japan National Tourism Organisation said.<\/p>\n<p>However, arrivals were still down 34% from March 2019, before pandemic travel curbs adopted from the following year.<\/p>\n<p>Visitor numbers have risen steadily since Japan resumed visa-free travel for many countries in October. It halted pre-arrival COVID tests for travellers from China on April 5 and is set to scrap all remaining infection controls from May 8.<\/p>\n<p>In March 2020, as the pandemic started to widen, Japan placed travel curbs on visitors from China and South Korea, its two largest inbound markets.<\/p>\n<p>Tourism to Japan all but halted for more than two years until a gradual reopening starting in June 2022.   <\/p>\n<p>Chinese visitors last month more than doubled to 75,700 from February, the tourism data showed. But that is still a trickle compared to the record 2019 figure of 9.5 million that accounted for a third of all visitors.<\/p>\n<p>A full recovery in Chinese tourist numbers is likely to take time because of a shortage of flights and Beijing&#8217;s remaining curbs on the destinations of group tours by citizens.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p> (Reporting by Rocky Swift; Editing by Kim Coghill and Clarence Fernandez)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/japan-visitors-reach-post-covid\/file-photo-tourists-prepare-to-take-a-picture-under-illuminated\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3I07H-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3I07H-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/japan-visitors-reach-post-covid\/file-photo-girls-feed-sparrows-and-take-photos-in-front\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3I07J-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3I07J-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/japan-visitors-reach-post-covid\/file-photo-people-enjoy-cherry-blossoms-in-tokyo\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3I07I-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3I07I-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/japan-visitors-reach-post-covid\/visitors-ride-boats-next-to-blooming-cherry-blossoms-at-chidorigafuchi\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3I07D-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3I07D-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TOKYO (Reuters) &#8211; Visitors to Japan surged in March to their highest after the COVID-19 pandemic, official data showed on Wednesday, with overseas tourists flocking to see the nation&#8217;s famous cherry blossoms for the first time in four years as travel curbs eased. The number of foreign visitors for business and leisure stood at 1.82 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":15667,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1222],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-15661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-world-news","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3I07H-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15661"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15681,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15661\/revisions\/15681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}