Private citizens in Japan who yearn to travel in space will soon get a chance to live out their fantasies -- for a suitably astronomical sum.
JTB Corp., the nation's largest travel agency, said Thursday it will start inviting applications in October for commercial spaceflight programs organized by U.S. space tourism firm Space Adventures, Ltd.
"Japan and the Japanese market has been, since the very beginning of Space Adventures, an extremely important market to develop," Space Adventures Chief Executive Eric Anderson told a news conference in Tokyo. "We've had many customers (for our space-related programs) in the past from Japan, and the interest in space tourism here is very large."