The estimated number of foreign visitors to Japan in September increased 11.7-fold from a year earlier to 206,500, government data showed Wednesday, with the figure likely to jump in the coming months after Japan removed almost all its COVID-19 entry restrictions earlier this month.
The figure exceeded 200,000 for the first time since February 2020 but was down 90.9 percent from September in the pre-pandemic year of 2019, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization.
Visitors in the month were primarily businesspeople, technical interns and international students.
Although the government resumed accepting foreign tourists in early September on tour packages that were unaccompanied by tour guides, the number of visitors entering the country for tourism remained sluggish at 19,013.
On Oct. 11, the government removed its cap on daily arrivals and its ban on individual, non-prearranged trips to revive the country's struggling inbound tourism sector.
Tourists are no longer required to travel on package tours, nor are they required to obtain a visa if they are citizens of one of 68 countries and regions with which Japan had a waiver agreement before the pandemic.
