Chinese tourists travel to Japan to clear snow for free, spark ‘unique’ travel debate
Locals are surprised this labour-intensive work, usually frowned upon, has turned into a profitable tourist venture
Some Japanese tour agencies and hotels are elevating holiday travel by offering a snow-shovelling experience as a unique tourist attraction for overseas visitors.
During the week-long Spring Festival holiday in January and February, mainland China recorded 7.7 million entry-exit trips.
Japan emerged as one of the top international destinations for Chinese tourists, with tourism orders for trips to Japan doubling compared to last year’s Spring Festival holiday, as reported by China’s Xinhua News.
In addition to the still-popular phenomenon of “bakugai”, which refers to “explosive buying” and was coined to describe Chinese shoppers, another viral activity among tourists is snow shovelling.
According to Japanese media outlet TBS Television, a local tour agency in Sapporo, located in northern Japan’s Hokkaido prefecture, introduced the snow shovelling tour as a local speciality.
Sapporo, home to two million residents, is renowned as one of the snowiest cities globally, experiencing sub-zero temperatures for one-third of the year and an average snowfall of five metres each winter.
