8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The third issue concerns increasing the number of foreign visitors to Japan. Looking at the number of foreign tourists for 2010, Japan was well behind popular international tourist destinations. France was the most popular in the world, attracting 76.8 million foreign visitors, followed by the United States with 59.75 million.
The number of tourists that visited Japan was 8.61 million, just above one-tenth that of France. Looking at other Asian destinations, Japan lagged far behind China, which received 55.67 million visitors, and was behind Hong Kong (20.09 million), Thailand (15.84 million), Singapore (9.16 million), and South Korea (8.8 million), which is just next door.