A tourism exhibition held in Hangzhou Saturday promises visitors a comprehensive experience of Japanese tourist resources, including its hot springs, buckwheat noodles, and even Sony robots' debut performance of shadowboxing, or Taiji in Chinese.

"We'd like to fuel up Chinese passion to visit Japan by enabling them to 'feel' Japan in person," said Naoki Fujii, senior director of the International Tourism Promotion Division under Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MLIT).

In 2004, 620,000 Chinese tourists visited Japan, up 37 percent year-on-year, according to Naoki.

"We eye a sharper increase in the future," Naoki said.

Altogether 35 Japanese governmental and civilian groups are attending the exhibition, including leading travel agencies such as JTB, the largest card issuer and acquirer in Japan, JCB, airways like Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways, as well as local Japanese governments.

Similar exhibitions were held in Shanghai and Guangzhou early this year to woo the more affluent Chinese for stopovers in Japan,according to Naoki.

This exhibition, however, is the first jointly sponsored by relevant Chinese and Japanese authorities, that is, the Hangzhou Tourism Committee (HTC) and MLIT's VJC Headquarters.

"The exhibition enables better communication and cooperation between Chinese and Japanese travel agencies," said Cui Fengjun, HTC's deputy director.

In a joint effort with Japanese government and the private sector, MLIT's Visit Japan Campaign (VJC) kicked off in 2003, according to Naoki. Statistics from Japan's MLIT show, in 2004, 6.14 million foreign tourists visited Japan, compared to 16.83 million Japanese who traveled abroad in the same year.

The VJC is a strategic program designed to encourage a sharp increase in the number of visitors to Japan from overseas. The campaign intends to attract 10 million foreign tourists to visit Japan by the year 2010.

(Xinhua News Agency December 5, 2005)