Once a tourism underachiever, Japan is riding high like never before. Last year, the nation attracted a record 31 million foreign tourists, topping 30 million for the first time and pulling off nearly a fourfold jump from 2012.
But this is not to say the path to true tourism supremacy has been rosy — or complete. Concerns persist over the shortage of multilingual platforms, a glacial shift toward implementing a cashless payment system and the nation's inherent proneness to natural disasters.
Hiroshi Tabata, who last July ascended to the helm of the Japan Tourism Agency, the public entity central to Japan's tourism strategy, says the government is scrambling to take care of these long-held concerns.
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