Booming numbers of foreign visitors to Japan are driving up prices at restaurants near tourist spots, as a weaker yen makes the country a bargain destination and local wages struggle to keep up with a broader rise in costs.
Emblematic of this is the ¥6,980 ($46.52) sashimi-topped rice bowl at Toyosu Senkyaku Banrai, a new retail complex in Tokyo’s Toyosu area. It’s made with fresh seafood from the adjacent fish market, which was moved from the famed Tsukiji auction building in 2018. A similar kaisen-don meal, made with slightly lower quality ingredients, can be had for ¥1,000 to ¥1,500 in other parts of the city.
In January, 2.69 million people visited the country, up 80% from a year earlier and on par with pre-pandemic levels, Japan’s National Tourism Organization said Wednesday.
Earlier this month, the yen slipped past 150 to the dollar, putting the currency close to levels last seen in 1990 and making Japan an affordable destination for Americans and people from countries with stronger currencies. That, in turn, has helped to fuel a post-pandemic tourism boom, with hotels, restaurants and other retail businesses struggling to keep up with demand. But so far, domestic wages haven’t kept up and the economy tipped into a technical recession at the end of 2023.
“Income gains haven’t been able to keep up with rising prices,” said Atsushi Takeda, chief economist at Itochu Research Institute Inc. Even so, he said there’s a chance that rising prices will finally force consumers to seek higher wages and change spending habits.
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Spending by visitors totaled a record ¥5.3 trillion in 2023, up by roughly 10% compared with the tally in 2019, before the pandemic, while spending per person increased by almost 34% to ¥212,000, data from the Japan Tourism Agency showed last month. Japan saw 25 million tourists in 2023, the largest…
