Although many people visited their hometowns or elsewhere for the first summer holiday season in three years without COVID 19 restrictions on domestic travel, operators of some transport networks reported sluggish sales as the country continues to grapple with a seventh wave of infections.
Long lines formed at security checkpoints, especially before departures of Tokyo-bound flights, with vacationers seen nearly shoulder-to- shoulder in souvenir shops at Fukuoka airport in southwestern Japan.
Before going to her family home in Fukuoka, Kyoko Ito, a 41-year-old Tokyo office worker, made sure she had a negative PCR test. I could spend my time without worrying what people around me thought, because there are no movement restrictions. Satoshi, his 7-year-old son, said he spent time catching cicadas with his grandfather.
The shinkansen bullet train platforms of Tokyo Station were also bustling. Miki Hisamochi, 40, had just returned from visiting her parents in Nagaoka, northwest of Tokyo, in Niigata Prefecture.
Hisamochi attended the Nagaoka fireworks festival, held for the first time in three years after being cancelled due to the coronaviruses, saying it moved me because it was very beautiful. Several rail operators said that reservations for both shinkansen and conventional lines in the one week period from last Wednesday were 2.69 times higher than the same period in 2021, recovering to about 60 percent of the pre-pandemic level seen in 2018.
But East Japan Railway Co. said reservations slowed from August as the nationwide number of COVID 19 cases remained high.
The airlines said reservations for domestic flights between Aug. 6 and 16 were 1.7 times higher than the same period in 2021, with a total of 2,998, 000 passengers.
Highway operators also predicted traffic congestion in various locations across Japan on Sunday.