Has anyone noticed any uptick in Japanese folks visiting?

[Alcibiades]

My town is pretty diverse, but we don't have a lot of visitors from Japan: when they do visit, though, you'll find them at the local botanical gardens.



If you're Japanese and are in Durham, for some reason folks are compelled to visit the one place specifically designed as an homage to the gardens of Japan. Sort of like Americans eating McDonalds in Paris.

In the past two days, though, I've run into two elderly Japanese women, one in target and the other in the local library. The lady at Target said she was visiting family, noticed I had a six year old boy, and asked what I'd get him if I had to get him a present. I told her my son was crazy about Lego. Later I saw her cart and noticed she had about six different lego toys in it, way more than enough to keep any kid busy for a week. She was very sweet: it only later occurred to me that, had her trip been planned, she certainly would have brought presents over with her, like my own in-laws would do when they visit from New Jersey. It also occurred to me that, if there are a few folks visiting places like Durham, where the Japanese American community is fairly small, there must be lots of folks visiting in places like California, where I used to live and there are probably a lot more folks who have family in Japan.

Then I googled "Japan travel" for news stories and found that there are a lot of stories about cuts in travel: apparently United, Cathay and Quantas have all cut flights because of flagging demand by tourists to Japan. I wonder if this might be made up for by an influx of tourists from Japan.

[ZombieHorde]

1. I live in a mountain town in Montana, and we always seem to have had a large Japanese population.

Not sure why.

[dkf]

2. Hawaii just changed it's projection of 0.5% growth to 1.6% decline in revenues due to less Japanese

Tourists.

We had an increase of 12% in visitor arrivals before the earthquake.