Seeing others' holiday snaps of Japan on social media made Maitri Sanghvi want to go there
As I open up Instagram, I see another person in their late-20s has been to Japan.
It shouldn't come as a surprise any more.
"I cannot scroll through TikTok or Instagram without seeing videos of people in [convenience store] 7-11 and trying all the different skincare and trying all the snacks and the viral sandwiches and the viral drinks and going to all the viral restaurants," says Alex Baker, who has been to Japan three times.
There's been growing hype about Japan as a travel destination among young British people.
Data from the Japanese National Tourism Organization, external shows that 483,157 British tourists visited Japan in 2025, up 24.8% on 2024 and up 40.8% on 2019, the benchmark year used by travel companies to compare with pre-pandemic trends. Provisional data for 2026 suggests numbers are continuing to grow.
This reflects the boom in total tourism to Japan since the pandemic, with a record number of foreign visitors in 2025.
The Brits in their 20s and 30s I spoke to gave a long list of reasons for wanting to go to Japan – the cityscapes, food, anime, nature, history, gaming, temples. But they largely agreed that social media was the main driving force behind so many young people heading there.
When Maitri Sanghvi scrolled through TikTok, "Japan just kept popping up," she says.
It was a big reason why Maitri, 24, and her boyfriend went for three weeks earlier this year. "Seeing [Japan] on social media restarted my urge of wanting to go," she says.
Search #japantravel on TikTok or Instagram and you'll see countless videos of Mount Fuji, bowls of steaming ramen, itinerary suggestions, small villages in the Japanese Alps, the Fushimi Inari torii gates in Kyoto, the neon lights of Osaka's Dotonbori, and the chaos of Shibuya Crossing.
"Seeing other people's Japan videos definitely influenced my decision to go," says Aden Ibrahim, 29.
Aden says the social media buzz around Japan made him want to go
Since he went with friends last July, Aden has posted dozens of TikToks of his trip, and he's still uploading them more than a year later. One captioned "Japan made it out the group chat" has 1.1 million views.
Travelling to Japan isn't cheap – return off-peak flights with a layover in China start at about £450 with a budget airline. But the yen is weakening, making it cheaper for tourists when they're actually out there – even as rising prices hit residents. In July, the yen fell to a 40-year low.
