If it's Golden Week, it must be time to dust off those travel statistics again. Every year, government and tourist-industry number-crunchers tell us the score on the number of Japanese traveling abroad in the madcap first week of May, as opposed to those who travel inside Japan or, most sensibly of all, stay home and put their feet up.
Some years, more people opt to go overseas, despite the ultra-double-peak airfares and the crush at the airports; some years (surprise!) fewer do. The crests and dips in the statistics are generally taken as indicators of how the economy is doing. More people are traveling? Things must be looking up. Not so many overseas bookings this year? Things must be grim after all.
This year, the statisticians tell us, numbers will be up, though overall, more middle-aged and elderly people are going and comparatively fewer young ones. That little blip already has industry analysts racking their brains for explanations. Our favorite comes from one tourist-company executive who was quoted as surmising last week that more young people are staying home these days because a) their cell-phone bills are so high they can't afford to travel, and b) they can buy their favorite designer brands in Japan more easily than they can abroad. That man is an original thinker: Note that he didn't so much as mention the traditional industry bugaboo of recession. According to this scenario, the economy is doing just fine: Young Japanese are so busy spending they don't have time to travel.