Japan to ease visa regulations for individual Chinese travelers+

BEIJING, April 13 Kyodo -
The Japanese government will significantly ease visa regulations for individual
Chinese travelers as part of its efforts to lure more Chinese visitors to
Japan, a senior Japanese official said Tuesday.
Hiroshi Mizohata, commissioner of the Japan Tourism Agency, spelled out the
policy in a briefing to Chinese journalists during a visit to Beijing.
Most Chinese visitors travel to Japan on group tours.
Individual Chinese travelers must show they have annual incomes of more than
250,000 yuan (3.4 million yen), a princely sum for most Chinese wage earners,
as part of requirements in applying for a tourist visa to Japan.
The Japan Tourism Agency is expected to announce new visa regulations for
Chinese nationals later this month.
The Japanese government began targeting well-off Chinese travelers last year,
and applications for individual Chinese travelers were accepted at Japanese
consular offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou starting last July.
According to Japanese officials, the Japanese government had issued 13,000
individual tourist visas to Chinese nationals by February this year.
The Japanese government plans to expand the number of consular offices handling
the application of individual tourist visas in China to seven locations in
China in July.
The number of Chinese travelers to Japan rose to 1.01 million last year, up 0.6
percent from the previous year.
The Japan Tourism Agency has set a goal of attracting 25 million foreign
visitors to Japan by 2019.
Mizohata said this goal would not be attainable unless 6 million to 8 million
people from China travel to Japan in a year.
==Kyodo