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The story
At a press conference on September 30, the Osaka Tourism Bureau announced that the number of foreign tourists visiting Osaka in August fell roughly 10% year-on-year. Visitors from China dropped sharply, down about 59%, while Italy and Spain each hit all-time highs for a single month, and nine other countries and regions — including South Korea and Taiwan — set new August records. The weak yen and summer vacation season are seen as the main drivers. On 5ch, opinions were split over whether the drop in Chinese tourists stems from cooling Japan-China relations or from China’s domestic economic slump, with some posters arguing that actual spending matters more than raw visitor numbers.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026, 10:13 AM
At a press conference on the 30th, the Osaka Tourism Bureau revealed that inbound foreign tourism to Osaka last month fell compared to the same period last year, calling the situation “extremely tough.”
According to the Bureau, tourists from Italy and Spain set new single-month records, while nine countries and regions — South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, France, Russia, and the United States — recorded their highest-ever August figures. Long summer holidays and the weak yen are believed to be the main factors.
Source: newsdig.tbs.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
This has nothing to do with cooling Japan-China relations.
What's actually cooling is the Chinese economy.
Chinese tourist numbers are down in every country, not just here.
Really? Got a source for that?
Re: #38
Also worth discounting: with Chinese tourists (especially tour groups), a lot of their spending gets funneled through resident Chinese in Japan who corral the groups, so much of that money just circulates within the community rather than reaching the wider economy.
As long as the Hormuz crisis drags on, the energy crunch continues, and a food crisis from fertilizer shortages is becoming a real possibility.
Jet fuel shortages are driving airfares up too.
This really isn't the time for leisurely sightseeing.
Not that it should be, honestly.
There's no Expo this year, and on top of that, Chinese visitors are down 60% while the overall drop is only 10% — meaning tourists from everywhere else must have massively increased.
There weren't that many foreigners who actually came to Japan just for the Expo.
The people at that Expo were mostly locals from the Kansai region.
Tokyo gets way more tourists, so don't worry — Osaka's still losing to Tokyo.
The foreigners looked pretty startled seeing my face too.
Guess that shows how few actual Japanese people are left in Namba.
No, the point is that even measured against last year's Expo numbers, a 60% drop in Chinese visitors barely made a dent.
Re: #92
Tokyo only gets more because national policy funnels all the direct flights from Europe and the US there — it's really just a transit hub for Osaka and Kyoto.
Who travels all the way to Japan just to sightsee at Sensoji Temple, which has zero historical value, or Tokyo Tower, a knockoff of the Eiffel Tower?
Lol, "iron ore," really?
Tourism only makes up about 1.5-2% of Japan's GDP, you know?
Even in the extreme case where zero tourists showed up, the impact would be minor.
Osaka City: 7.7%
Tokyo's 23 wards: 6.7%
Osaka Ikuno Ward: 24.45%
Osaka Naniwa Ward: 18.13%
Osaka Nishinari Ward: 16.06%
Tokyo Shinjuku Ward: 14.53%
Tokyo Toshima Ward: 13.04%
Tokyo Arakawa Ward: 11.35%
During the Osaka Expo too, they were counting staff clocking in and out multiple times a day as "visitors," lol.
The legacy media is conveniently burying the fact that this comparison is against last year, when the Osaka Expo was running.
If anything, the real surprise is that even this year, with no Expo at all, foreign tourist numbers stayed roughly on par with Expo-era levels.
If you actually read the article, it also compares against the national average (noting Osaka is 4.2% below it), so a plain reading suggests the Expo effect is already factored in.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G3SCt-Eb0AAh1i5.jpg
Filter the reviews to English only and it's nothing but scathing comments
https://www.tripadvisor.jp/Attraction_Review-g298566-d32870280-Reviews-or10-Osaka_Kansai_Expo_2025-Osaka_Osaka_Prefecture_Kinki.html
The Chinese-ethnic visitors who actually come to Japan
are these people, lmaooooooo
What kind of world has people traveling
for tourism to a country they hate, lmaoooooooooooooooooo
Total construction cost: roughly ¥19 billion
Never ran a single trip to the venue
Looks like they just lost their best customers.
Whether that stuff sells or not has nothing to do with my wallet lol
All it does is drag prices up for everyone else — pure nuisance!
These days social media posts and review sites get translated straight across, so
anyone still falling for that stuff is pretty dumb.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJbO3o6aQAAAHer.jpg
Background and Key Points of Debate
One thing easy to overlook in this announcement is that the comparison point, August 2025, fell during the Osaka-Kansai Expo. The prior year’s figures may themselves have been inflated by the Expo effect, making a simple year-on-year comparison a poor measure of the real picture. In the thread, some attributed the drop in Chinese tourists to worsening Japan-China relations, but others pointed out that Chinese tourist numbers are falling in other countries too, and the view that China’s domestic consumption slump and economic slowdown are the main culprits proved more dominant. There were also comments stressing that what matters isn’t just the rise or fall in visitor numbers but how much was actually spent, highlighting the limits of judging economic impact by headcount alone.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread “[Breaking] Foreign tourists in August down about 10% year-on-year — Chinese tourists down about 59% — Osaka Tourism Bureau announces“.
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