TOKYO: Major cities in Japan saw the number of visitors recover toward pre-pandemic levels nearly a month after the government completely lifted its coronavirus emergency on May 25, data have shown.

Crowds in Tokyo's posh Ginza district on Wednesday increased to some 80 percent of the levels before the new virus started to spread in the country, according to the data compiled by major mobile phone carrier NTT Docomo Inc. based on information collected through the firm's base stations.

As of 3 p.m. Wednesday, (6 a.m. GMT), the numbers of people going out and about in Ginza and at Tokyo's busy Shinjuku Station were both only 20.4 percent below the daily average between Jan. 18 and Feb. 24, before COVID-19 cases spiked in the country.

Crowds decreased by 8.2 percent at Sapporo Station in Hokkaido, northernmost Japan, by 1.7 percent at Yokohama Station in Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, by 21.4 percent in the Umeda downtown district in the western prefecture of Osaka, and by 10.8 percent at Hakata Station in the southwestern prefecture of Fukuoka.

The government fully lifted its requests for voluntary restrictions on travel across prefectural borders last Friday, but crowds seen at major airports on Wednesday remained almost the same as a week before.

The number of people spotted was down 55.4 percent from the pre-outbreak period at Terminal 2 of Tokyo International Airport at Haneda, down 42.5 percent at Osaka International Airport, also known as Itami Airport, down 57.2 percent at New Chitose Airport in Hokkaido, and down 46.2 percent at Naha Airport in the southernmost prefecture of Okinawa.

JIJI Press