Fly Out

Most of the offices in the country were closed until Wednesday because of New Year's Holidays last week, and because this past weekend was a three-day-weekend, a whole lot of people took off Thursday and Friday so that they can have a 10-day-holiday. If this was only a 5-day-holiday or so, then the number of people flying out of the country probably wouldn't have gone up so much, but when people have ten days off from work and have just recieved their yearend bonus salary, they'd surely be tempted to go on a vacation abroad.

People who fully enjoyed their holidays till the last minute flew back into Japan yesterday (and a lot of them go to work today) and the TV news said that the number of travelers flying outside of Japan this yearend and New Year's holidays was the largest ever since some organization (perhaps the airport?) started counting and keeping records.

The popular destinations were beach resorts such as Hawaii, Guam, Saipan, that direction as always, but according to some travel agencies and airports destinations in China seems to be picking up as well as the Southeast Asian places which suffered a huge damage the last couple of winters, by many means. It seems like so many people wanted to escape the cold here :p
I am so super jealous. I love traveling.

Anyway, the news also said that the number of three-day-weekends this year in Japan increases a little bit so a whole lot of people in the tourism industry are quietly excited about their prospects.
So if there're anybody in the tourism industry in and outside of Japan, this year would be a huge chance to attract Japanese tourists to your places!!

In relation to this, I'm thinking of setting a section on Japan Mode to promote towns and cities. You know, like "town of the month" or sth like that. If there's anyone out there who wants to write an article of a couple of pages and have it published on Japan Mode (most likely under Japan Guide) give me a holler here or send an e-mail to the address written on Japan Mode. It could be any town or city, within or outside of Japan, as long as you are wanting to "link" Japan and your town/city/country. The idea's still tentative, but I'm sure we can work out something brilliant *sparkles*

Today's update on Japan Mode: This Week's Events in Tokyo ... gathered some info on events you can only see at the beginning of the year.