TOKYO, June 19 (Xinhua) -- Japan logged a total of 3,040,100 foreign visitors in May, crossing the 3-million mark for the third straight month and a record high for May, government data showed Wednesday.
The figure represented a 60.1 percent increase compared to the same month last year and a 9.6 percent rise from May 2019, data from the Japan National Tourism Organization showed.
In the first five months of the year, the cumulative number of inbound tourists came to around 14.6 million.
The organization attributed the surge to several factors, including heightened travel demand during school holidays in many parts of the world and a significant increase in visitors from certain markets.
Japan saw the largest number of travelers from South Korea at 738,800, up 22.4 percent from the pre-pandemic level in 2019, followed by those from China at 545,400, down 27.9 percent, the data showed.
Meanwhile, the number of outbound Japanese travelers in May rose 67.2 percent from a year earlier to 4,867,700, but was still down 39.3 percent compared with 2019. ■
