Visitors to Japan

More and more people visit Japan every year. In fact, I see quite a few non-Japanese buyers at auction sites. Some auction sites have Halal meals and a prayer room for Muslims. Going to Akihabara, a close town from our office, we see lots of foreign visitors. Japan is definitely becoming more international. However, because of the current recession and the high Yen, the absolute numbers of visitors are getting less because a trip to Japan, which used to be not too bad, is now getting more expensive. In the middle of such tough times, there was news on TV about a ski field in Niigata Prefecture doing very well. Although Niseko in Hokkaido and Hakuba in Nagano are leading in popularity, those ski fields are targeting Russia and Eastern Asia, and are spending money on advertisement in the relevant countries and preparing their facilities to welcome visitors from there. I am going to talk about these ski fields in this issue.

At Naeba Ski Resort in Yuzawa-machi, where approximately 1.3 million skiers visit every year, you can hear different languages if you queue up for the lifts. This winter the numbers of the visitors from overseas before the 5th of January are counted at almost 2,800, 1,000 more than the same time last year. Because of cheap Wong, visitors from Korea have decreased and the numbers of Russian skiers were around 900, quite similar figures to last year’s but the numbers of Taiwanese visitors has increased greatly from only 100 last year to almost 1,200 this year. A Russian man was interviewed and was saying “Ski fields in Russia are too cold and have poor accommodation, you know. This is great: plenty of lifts and the services are excellent. Its Onsens are fantastic, too”. The banker was visiting there from Khabarovsk with his family.

About 2 years ago, they started to employ Russian, Chinese and Korean speaking staff and they have the advantage of direct flights from large cities in Eastern Russia such as Vladivostok and Khabarovsk.

Joetsu Kokusai Ski Resort in Minamiuonuma City, holds an annual international skiing competition since 3 years ago and for the week around the 4 day event, about 1,000 visitors from Eastern Asia, Europe and North America come. Their sales point is “not too far from Tokyo metropolitan district and you can combine skiing with a sightseeing tour of the capital of Japan”.

At Myoko City, where there are 9 ski fields, only 100 people visited from overseas 2 years ago but it increased dramatically to 500 last year. This year, its tourism association is expecting around 3,000 estimating from bookings. Niigata prefectural government is strongly supporting these private activities. They invited those in tourism and journalism in Eastern Asia and took them to the ski fields as well as introducing the Japanese culture of Onsen and food. “Niigata is not well-known as a tourist spot yet but our advertisement seems to be working gradually”, said their spokesman. With lots of hope, they are continuing to try attracting foreign tourists for a while.

Most news lately is about the recession and the high Yen and not much good news but I feel great to hear many people still visit here in this tough time and they are feeling good about our country.

We have our office in Tokyo. If you come to one of the ski fields, please come and visit us on the way to your sightseeing tour of the capital city.


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