Japan logged 3,135,600 foreign visitors in June, the highest number ever recorded for a single month, government data has showed.
The figure, crossing the 3-million mark for the fourth straight month, represented a 51.2 percent increase compared to the same month 2023 and an 8.9 percent rise from June 2019, according to the latest data from the Japan National Tourism Organization.
In the first half of the year, the cumulative number of inbound tourists came to around 17.78 million, also a record high, which was 1 million more than the figure recorded for the first half of 2019.
The organization attributed the surge to increasing travel demand during consecutive holidays including school vacations across the globe.
Japan saw the largest number of travelers from South Korea at 703,300, up 29 percent from the pre-pandemic level in 2019, followed by those from China at 660,900, down 25.0 percent, the data showed.
Meanwhile, the number of outbound Japanese travelers in June rose 32.3 percent from a year earlier to 930,200, but was still down 38.8 percent compared with 2019.
On Friday, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the country could see a record 35 million foreign visitors this year.
