Spring has come. Spring is the ideal time for hiking. So here is an introduction to Japan's national parks. The varied nature of the long north-south Japanese archipelago is beautiful to foreign travelers. According to data from the Japan Tourism Agency, the fourth most popular "thing to do in Japan" for foreign visitors for tourism and leisure purposes in 2019 was "Nature and scenic spot sightseeing (65.9%)". Eating Japanese food (96.6%) and shopping (82.8%) came in first and second, followed by walking around downtown (74.6%).Taiwanese and Hong Kong visitors, frequent repeat visitors to Japan, selected "Nature/Scenic Sightseeing" at 75.2% and 71.9%, respectively, with over 70% having experienced "Nature/Scenic Sightseeing" when they traveled to Japan.To improve the experience of 'nature and scenic spot tourism,' we have compiled a ranking of 34 national parks in Japan. What surprised us when we collected the ranking was a large bias between the overall number of national park users (mainly Japanese) and the number of foreign visitors to Japan. Chichibu Tama-Kai National Park (7th in terms of the number of users) and Daisen-Oki National Park (8th in terms of the number of users), which are popular among Japanese, were ranked lower among foreign visitors to Japan, at 24th and 23rd respectively. (Both data from 2017). Chichibu-Tama-Kai National Park Chichibu-Tama-Kai National Park is a national park that straddles the four prefectures of Saitama, Tokyo, Yamanashi, and Nagano. It is the closest national park to the Tokyo metropolitan area and has good transport links (it takes about two hours by train from Tokyo Station to Okutama Station), making it a very attractive national park for foreign visitors. In addition, Chichibu-Tama-Kai National Park is a popular national park, ranked 9th overall in terms of national parks, despite a slight decrease in visitor growth over the past 20 years (1997-2017), down 0.9% per year. Daisen-Oki National Park Daisen-Oki National Park, on the other hand, is a national park that straddles the three prefectures of Tottori, Shimane, and Okayama. As a national park in a prefecture with an extremely low rate of foreign visitors (0.45% in Tottori Prefecture, 0.23% in Shimane Prefecture, and 1.0% in Okayama Prefecture, all according to Japan Tourism Agency data for 2019), it is probably not a familiar national park to foreign visitors. However, Daisen-Oki National Park is a national park in the Oki, a UNESCO World Geopark. It is also a very attractive national park that is the setting of the Izumo Taisha shrine and other places of mythology and mountain worship. Daisen-Oki National Park is also a top-rated national park, ranked third among all national parks with a 3.4% annual visitor increase over the past 10 years (2007-2017).
