TokyoTomo Travel Guide

The Immigration Bureau of the Ministry of Justice released the final number of Japanese outbound travelers for 2008 which stood at 15,987,250, down 7.6 percent from the previous year (cf. 15,987,240 in preliminary figure). In terms of travelers’ domicile, all prefectures from Hokkaido to Okinawa recorded a decline, and there were no age groups that showed a positive growth.

Seventeen prefectures registered a double-digit decline with Kochi suffering the biggest drop of 15.6 percent (a decrease of 32,260 people), followed by Toyama’s 13.5 percent (78,603 people), and Iwate’s 12.3 percent (45,623 people). In the actual number of travelers by locality, top ranking metropolis/prefectures are Tokyo (3,046,025 people, -5.3%), Kanagawa (1,747,262, -7%), Osaka (1,217,127, -8.9%), and Aichi (1,082,853, -7.9%), and this order in the ranking is fixed since 2004. Tokyo was the smallest in the range of decline in all prefectures. Meanwhile, Chiba (999,783 people, -7.2%) and Saitama (960,840 people, -8.6%), both following on the heels of Aichi, kept No. 5 and No. 6 spots respectively as they did before, but fell short of a million travelers this time.

With regard to fluctuation in each age group, the sharpest drop was seen in the group of 55 to 59 with a decline of 13.6 percent (1,490,023 people), while the drop was smallest in the group of 60 to 64 with 3.1 percent (1,318,517 people). By gender, women marked a bigger drop with a decline of 8.0 percent (6,885,918 people) than men with a decline of 7.2 percent (9,101,332 people).

In the age bracket from 60 to 64 that recorded the smallest drop, men experienced a nominal drop of 0.8 percent (783,476 people) while women saw a decline of 6.4 percent (535,041 people). Among women, the smallest drop of 3.5 percent was witnessed in the age group of 40 to 44.

For more details, refer to the file attached below.

* Outbound traveler statistics for 2008 (Excel file)

Source: Travel Vision

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