Overseas tourists give life to parts of Japan that had been left behind

Even when they go home, tourists keep buying things from Japan

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Foreign tourists at Takayama, a city of central Japan, in March

IORI KAWATE and NOBUTAKA HIRAMOTO, Nikkei staff writers

TOKYO -- A wider swath of Japan is benefiting from the foreign tourist boom as more visitors find their way to the countryside and become smitten by stuff made in Japan.

Let's look at nights as a yardstick. International visitors in 2016 spent 69.38 million nights in Japan, according to the Japan Tourism Agency.

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