Those who are travelling out of Japan will have to pay a "Sayonara" tax - a levy of ¥1,000, or approximately S$12.20 from Jan 7. 

This applies to both Japanese and foreign travellers leaving Japan by plane or ship and will be added to airfare and ship tickets.

Tickets issued and bought before Jan 7 will be exempted.

Toddlers under two years old and transit passengers leaving Japan within 24 hours of arrival will not need to pay the tax.

Revenue to accommodate growing tourism

The rationale behind the levy is to generate revenue so as to accommodate growing tourist numbers.

The Japanese Government has set a goal of 40 million annual foreign visitors by 2020, which coincides with the Olympics and the Paralympics.

The revenue will be used to grow and develop tourism infrastructure, campaigns overseas and implementing more technological improvements in key areas of the country.

This includes technology such as facial recognition gates for more efficient immigration procedures at the airport.

It'll also be used for the setup of multilingual boards that contain information in several languages at places of interest, such as cultural sites and parks.

Japan attracted more than 30 million visitors in 2018, the highest number of tourists yet for them.

Revenue from the tax is estimated to amount to around ¥43 billion (S$537.9 million) per fiscal year, with the tax expected to bring in a whopping ¥50 billion (S$625.5 million) for the fiscal year of 2019.

Top image via Pexels on Pixabay