Japan set a goal of 20 million foreign visitors by 2020, when Tokyo will host the summer Olympics. But it has already exceeded that goal, welcoming 28 million international guests in 2017. Japan has now upped its goal to 40 million foreign visitors by 2020, but I’m not sure where they’re going to put them all. Kyoto is so packed, one hotel staff told me there isn’t an off season any more. To experience Japan as it used to be (there were only 2 million international visitors back in the 1980s when I wrote my first Frommer’s Japan guide), you’ll have to go off the well-beaten path. Iwate Prefecture, just two hours north of Tokyo via the Shinkansen bullet train, may still be recovering from the 2011 tsunami that ravaged the Tohoku coast, but since then it has also become home to Japan’s newest national park, the country’s longest hiking trail, two world heritage sites and a new stadium for the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
For more information, see my article, Japan’s Iwate Prefecture: Wild, White, and Wonderful, at Frommers.com.
