How Can Cities in Japan Accommodate More Tourists?

Tourism is huge. It’s huge in people’s lives in that many people dream of traveling the world, and visiting different cities and tourist spots. It’s huge for the economy, because a lot of places base most of their business on tourists visiting and spending money.

Japan is also a popular place for tourists to go. From the perspective of foreigners, Japanese culture is very unique and interesting. If you live in Tokyo, I’m sure you’ve seen lots of tourists around.

If there’s a huge increase in tourism, some changes might need to be made to accommodate those tourists, especially in a city like Tokyo that is already overcrowded.

Potential solutions to this problem could also help tackle the problems of overpopulation, and events that cause overcrowding during a World Cup.

If there were too many people in an area, then one solution would be to expand the space there. If this were done, then even with the same number of people, it wouldn’t feel as cramped.

Now, how can we make more space in cities? I think there’s a number of ways to do this, but in this article, I’d like to talk about one in particular.

I think that one way in which we can make more space in cities is by having more people work from home instead of commuting into the city to work in an office. Let me explain how this works.

If people start working from home more, it will help make more space in two ways. One is that the fewer people there are commuting or out around the city because of work, the more space there will be. Therefore, if we’re worried about there being too many people, that could be one way in which to reduce the number.

The second way in which working from home would affect the amount of space is that if there are fewer people going to offices, then the offices don’t need to be as big. Companies can move into smaller offices, thereby allowing for the vacated spaces to be used for other things, which might accommodate more tourists, like hotels.

Of course, not all companies are able to allow work from home due to the nature of the jobs, but there are certainly a lot of jobs that could be done from home but traditionally require people to commute into an office to work.

Whilst I think this solution could work to some degree, there are definitely some issues with mass groups of people starting to work from home. Loneliness could be a big factor. In a city like Tokyo that can already be pretty lonely, having to work from home could make that even worse. In addition to this, a lot of businesses rely on there being a lot of workers around the city. Even though tourist businesses could benefit, many other kinds of businesses could face real problems.

If we do see a massive increase in tourism, this could be one option to consider, amongst many other things.

Thomas

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Vocabulary
dream (verb) – to fantasize about doing something greatly desired
accommodate (verb) – to provide a place to stay or sufficient space for someone or something
cramped (adjective) – crowded or uncomfortably tight
vacate (verb) – to leave an area or space so that it is no longer occupied
degree (noun) – an amount or level of something