Golden Week holiday crowds up 95% in Japan cities on COVID recovery

Crowds in 95 percent of major cities in Japan during the Golden Week holiday period increased from a year ago amid eased coronavirus measures, private sector data showed Thursday.

But while travel particularly boomed in regional areas, some commercial districts in major cities saw less crowding, indicating that the tourism industry has not yet fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to analysis by Kyodo News based on the data.

Kyodo News analyzed the data from anonymous location information obtained by a smartphone application created by IT firm X-Locations Inc.

The data looked i...