Once a tourism underachiever, Japan is riding high like never before. Last year, the nation attracted a record 31 million foreign tourists, topping 30 million for the first time and pulling off nearly a fourfold jump from 2012.
But this is not to say the path to true tourism supremacy has been rosy ¡ª or complete. Concerns persist over the shortage of multilingual platforms, a glacial shift toward implementing a cashless payment system and the nation¡¯s inherent proneness to natural disasters.
Hiroshi Tabata, who last July ascended to the helm of the Japan Tourism Agency, the public entity central to Japan¡¯s tourism strategy, says the government is scrambling to take care of these long-held concerns.
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