Japan: Taking centre stage in Singapore and beyond

Scroll through your social media feed this holiday season, and practically everyone you know is in Japan or making plans to vacation there.

- Eddino Abdul Hadi

The running joke is that you are more likely to bump into a fellow Singaporean in Tokyo or Osaka than in Orchard Road.

Japan is, after all, the top destination for Singaporean travellers, according to Visa's Global Travel Intentions Study released in early 2024. The country is undergoing a boom in inbound tourism and saw a monthly record of 3.31 million visitors in October alone.

By the end of November, the country saw 33.4 million in tourist arrivals in 2024, more than the previous annual record of 31.9 million set in 2019, before the pandemic.

Japan's former prime minister Fumio Kishida predicted in July that by year-end, the country's annual number of inbound tourists will top 35 million, 10 per cent higher than in 2019.

Thanks to the weakening yen, tourists are also spending more than ever on ramen, theme parks, shopping and much more.

According to the Japan National Tourism Organization, travellers spent a record 5.9 trillion yen (S$52.2 billion) in the first nine months of 2024, exceeding the 5.3 trillion yen spent in all of 2023.

What has helped is more and cheaper flight options from Singapore to Japan, with Japanese low-cost carrier Peach Aviation launching flights from Singapore to Osaka on Dec 5. It joins two other Japanese low-cost carriers, Air Japan and Zipair, which currently ply the Singapore-Tokyo (Narita) route.

But you do not have to travel out of Singapore to feel the might of Japan in mainstream consciousness in 2024.