A shop with welcome signs written in Chinese in Tokyo’s Akihabara shopping district on October 4 (CFP)

Wu Tie, a 29-year-old architect living in Beijing, is an avid fan of travel. After going to Taiwan last October and to Europe in June with his wife, he decided to spend this year's National Day holiday (October 1-7) in a country he has always been yearning to see--Japan.

The eight-day trip cost Wu and his wife 16,000 yuan ($2,525) for air tickets, food and accommodations in the three cities they visited: Osaka, Nara and Kyoto. But the best part, Wu said, was the shopping.

"We spent nearly 20,000 yuan ($3,156) shopping on stuff like cosmetics for my wife and watches, sunglasses, thermos bottles and electronic manometers for my parents and in-laws," he told Beijing Review .

Electronic products and cosmetics are typically cheaper in Japan than in China, with some products costing just half of or a third of the price.

"All the shopping malls and cosmetics stores are filled with Chinese customers. Some of them were open till 3:00 a.m. to meet surging demand during the holiday," Wu said.

The shopping atmosphere attracted hundreds of thousands of Chinese during the National Day holiday, a peak season for outbound tourism.

Japan's newfound popularity as a vacation hub for neighboring Chinese could prove to be a much-needed boon to both economies and signal a thawing in relations between the two countries, which have escalated in recent years due to a dispute over the Diaoyu islands and the Japanese right wings' attitude toward historical issues.

Travel boom 

Chinese consumers who are becoming increasingly more affluent are often choosing to spend their cash on travel. More than 100 million Chinese traveled abroad in 2014, and Japan has become one of the main beneficiaries of the boom.

Japan is the most popular overseas destination for Chinese mainland tourists during the National Day holiday, supplanting traditional hot spots like South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the United States, according to a report from Ctrip, China's largest online travel agency.

More than 400,000 Chinese visited Japan during the recent holiday, each spending 25,000 yuan ($3,945) on average, including travel expenses and shopping, according to data from the Tourism Industry Association of Japan. Ctrip expects more than 4 million Chinese tourists to visit Japan in 2015, spending more than 100 billion yuan ($15.78 billion) in the country.

During the holiday, Chinese customers queued up at Japanese malls to buy made-in-Japan goods, which are seen as higher quality. The most popular goods that Chinese tourists scramble for include cosmetics, high-end electronic products, medical drugs, and household items like thermos bottles, clothes, jewelry and baby products, according to the Ctrip report. Many stores even had to put a limit on the quantity that each customer could purchase, fearing they would run out of stock.

A 20-year-old saleswoman at a Burberry flagship store on Ginza Street, a bustling commercial street in Tokyo, told Beijing Review  that 80 percent of its clients are Chinese.

"The number of Chinese customers has increased rapidly since the end of 2014, presumably due to the depreciation of the Japanese yen. They are shopping here almost every day," she said.

Today, one out of four foreign tourists in Japan is Chinese, according to the Japan Tourism Agency. About 3 million Chinese tourists visited Japan in the first eight months of this year, more than double the number during the same time last year, according to the agency's data.

The influx of Chinese visitors has been a welcome shot in the arm for Japan's economy. Tokyo's hotel occupancy rate increased to 93.5 percent in early October, 14.8 percentage points higher than the same period last year, marking a bounce back to pre-depression levels, according to a report from the Tourism Industry Association of Japan.

Chinese airlines are increasing their flights between the two countries to meet the demand. China Southern Airlines said it would open 30 new direct flights between China and Japan this year.

For its part, retailers in Japan are becoming more accommodating to Chinese shoppers by introducing Chinese-speaking shopping assistants and welcome signs written in Chinese. Some of the duty-free stores have redecorated to be one-stop shopping malls.

It hasn't always been this sunny for the countries. Economic and trade ties between China and Japan have worsened over the past three years because of a disagreement over the Diaoyu islands.

China is Japan's largest trading partner, the second largest export destination and the largest import source, according to data from Japan Customs.

Bilateral goods trade between the two countries totaled $285 billion in the first nine months of the year, up 0.4 percent year on year, according to China's Ministry of Commerce. However, Japanese investment in China dropped by 25.2 percent in the first nine months of 2015, compared with the same period last year.

Complementary economies 

Neither country benefits from increased tensions in the region and both should strive to eliminate them through cooperation, Fu Ying, Chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, said at the 11th Beijing-Tokyo Forum held in Beijing from October 23 to 25.

"A backward trend in the East Asian cooperation platform will undermine the competitiveness of the region," Fu said, calling for both sides to work together to push the region to regain momentum.

The necessity and urgency of increased collaboration between Beijing and Tokyo are more demanding than ever, and the two sides should take steps toward furthering ties, former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said at the forum.

"In particular, as Japan and China are two major economic powers, it is ludicrous for them to be hostile to each other," Fukuda said.

Wei Jianguo, Vice Chairman of China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said the two nation's current economic conditions provide an opportune moment for an increase in ties.

"China needs to improve its productivity and service industry, whereas Japan has experienced this and has a lot of experience that China can learn from. The two sides have a lot to work together on, such as developing a green economy, health-related industries, modern agriculture, new technologies and material," Wei said.

He also proposed that Japanese businesses use China's push to move its economy from a manufacturing-based one to a service-based one as a foothold to expand their presence in China.

Hirohide Yamaguchi, former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Japan, the country's central bank, also sees an opportunity for economic cooperation to benefit both sides, along with other East Asian countries.

"The Japanese economy needs to be vitalized with fresh power. To avoid the middle-income trap, China needs to increase its labor productivity and develop its high value-added industries. The two sides have a lot to work together on," Yamaguchi said.

Some progress to this effect has already been made.

The Sixth Trilateral Summit Meeting of China, Japan and South Korea was held in Seoul on November 1, a significant step forward for East Asia cooperation and another sign of warming ties between Beijing and Tokyo.

The trilateral summit, which has been held five times from 2008 to 2012, was suspended following a chill in relations between Japan and its neighbors. Resumption of the trilateral talks is expected to push for substantive progress of a widely anticipated trilateral free trade agreement, which would be a boon for both economies and its citizens like Wu, the 29-year-old architect living in Beijing.

"I had always wanted to go to Japan. After the National Day holiday trip, I have a very good impression of the country. The Japanese people are really well-mannered. It's a clean, tidy and civilized country," Wu said.

It's also cheaper than traveling in Europe and more convenient, he added.

"It's not only a paradise for shopping, but also rich in cultural heritage. When we visited Kyoto, we can see the country's careful observation of cultural heritage from the remains of China's Tang Dynasty culture in Japan's time-honored architectures," he said. "To any of my friends who are considering going to the country, I would say they should definitely go."

(Miao Xiaoyang also contributed to the story)

Copyedited by Jordyn Dahl

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