About 1 million Australians went there in 2025-26, representing a threefold increase from a decade ago.<\/p>\n
Numbers have surged since the pandemic reopening, at the same time as the Australian dollar has risen in value by well over 30% against the yen, bringing down the cost of shopping in Tokyo, dining in Osaka and sightseeing in Kyoto.<\/p>\n
The number of Australians visiting Japan has surged past pre-Covid levels<\/a><\/p>\n Dean Long, chief executive at the Australian Travel Industry Association, says it\u2019s been a \u201conce-in-a-generation currency position\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cJapan has always had a high level of appeal, but suddenly people could actually do the things that they wanted to do because of the currency,\u201d says Long.<\/p>\n He likens the experience to the period that ran between late 2010 and 2013 when the Australian dollar surged above parity with the US dollar.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat your Australian dollar could do in the US was extraordinary, so people had a higher quality experience,\u201d Long says.<\/p>\n \u2018Carry trade\u2019 putting downward pressure on yen<\/p>\n Forecasting currency movements is notoriously difficult, and there\u2019s no certainty that the yen will strengthen.<\/p>\n To do so, investors will need to unwind one of Wall Street\u2019s favourite strategies which involves borrowing yen at low interest rates to invest in higher yielding currencies.<\/p>\n The \u201ccarry trade\u201d, as it is known, has historically put downward pressure on the yen.<\/p>\n Japanese authorities want to halt a plummeting currency that has driven up energy and food import costs, while the US recently joined the effort to deter Tokyo from selling US treasuries, which drives up the US government\u2019s own borrowing costs.<\/p>\n
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