The number of visitors from China to Japan during the week-long National Day holidays reached a new record of 400,000, spending more than 100 billion yen ($83 million) on tours and shopping, the Guangzhou Daily reported on Saturday.
Chinese tourists spread across the neighboring country, including standard destinations such as Tokyo and Hokkaido. The number of visitors during the Golden Week surpassed the number of Spring Festival visitors for the first time.
"There's a dramatic increase of Chinese tourists to Japan during the holiday, our tours to Japan had been booked by the end of September," a travel agent surnamed Zhang at a Beijing-based travel agency told the Global times.
About 70 percent of Chinese tourists shopped. Overwhelmed by the Chinese tourists' purchasing power, some stores even limited each customer to two packs of facial masks.
According to a Seibu Department Store manager, a queue waiting for tax refunds stretched 30 meters, over 60 percent of them from the Chinese mainland. The turnover from October 1 to 6 was 2.5 times that of the same period last year.
The occupancy rate of hotels in Tokyo reached 93.5 percent, up 14.8 percent compared with the same period last year.
Analysts said visits to Japan began to pick up in 2002, as its natural scenery, services and short three-hour flight have made the country more attractive, news site cnr.cn reported on Sunday.
The recent depreciation of the Japanese yen also helped the surge, encouraging many tourists to flock to Japan to buy quality products, Zhang Shangzheng, a tourism professor at Anhui University, told the Global Times.
Yang Zhou, a Beijing-based writer, stocked up on eye drops and other healthcare products during his trip. He told the Global times that he trusts Japanese medicine, which costs more but quite effective.
Japan's Kyodo News Agency reported on Friday that China's low-cost airline company Chunqiu Airlines provided chartered flights between Shanghai and Ibaraki, with an occupancy rate of around 90 percent.
