Bold strategy :)

I don't think this was their "strategy", but more like a "young people are sometimes clueless and fail to take care of necessary things with enough buffer ahead of time" situations.

And that (student + exchange program + in general eligible for a visa) is why it turned out well. Not sure if it still would do so today. The "cheap yen" tourism boom might have brought in money, but also a lot of annoyance with unpleasant tourists amplified by how modern recommendation algorithms work (you see all the rage bait "a tourist behaved mean" and non "normal tourist is polite and does nothing strange") and various propaganda amplifying this. In general there seem to be a ton of "make cities look way worse wrt. safety and cleanliness and blame it on tourists/immigrants/minorities" videos across most western countries in recent times (not just JP, e.g. London has a lot of such nonsense, it's quite safe, but if you ask ticktock it's a lawless crime zone. ).

> Theft From the Person offences have a crime rate of 8.21 reports per 1,000 people in London, which is 4.69 times the national average. This figure is calculated from 87,224 crime reports logged by Metropolitan Police during the 12-month period ending November 2025.

https://crimerate.co.uk/london

That is more than Chicago.

> In June 2025, there were 631 reported incidents (23.2 per 100,000) – a 49% reduction from the August 2023 peak.

https://counciloncj.org/crime-in-chicago-what-you-need-to-kn...