Japan, Russia keen to double mutual tourist traffic by 2023 - Abe

MOSCOW, January 22. /TASS/. Japan and Russia set the task to promote ties in the tourism sphere and bring the mutual tourist traffic to 400 thousand, which is twice more than now, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Tuesday after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "The number of Russians visiting Japan last year was the record one and the figure of visits is growing continuously in general. It was about 100 thousand individuals from each side last year. We set the task to attribute even greater scale to such dynamics and increase the number of mutual tourist trips twofold by 2023, to 400,000 individuals," Abe said. Russia and Japan are going to develop ties in other spheres, including student exchanges, the Prime Minister noted. Japan’s authorities softened the entry visa issuance procedure for Russian citizens from January 1, 2017. The number of tourists from Russia that visited Japan surged by 40.8% year-on-year as a result and was over 77,000 in 2017. The number of Japanese tourists visiting Russia was over 100 thousand in the same period. Japan also introduced an easier visa issue procedure for Russian tourists visiting the country in organized groups under package tours since October 1 of the last year. Read more