Japan Off-PeakThe months when both foreign and Japanese travellers stay away, prefecture by prefecture
By Japan Off-Peak (TechAthletes) · 2026-10-06 · Data: Japan Tourism Agency, counted by us (method)
Most "off-season" advice answers one question: when do fewer foreign tourists come? But a hotel feels empty only when Japanese travellers are away too. Guests who live in Japan account for almost three in four nights in all types of lodging there (72.8% in 2025), so their calendar matters at least as much.
This article looks for the months when both groups are scarce. We call them double-quiet months.
How we counted
For every prefecture, we took the Japan Tourism Agency's confirmed 2025 hotel statistics and split each month's guest nights into two groups:
- Foreign guests: people with no address in Japan.
- Japanese guests: everyone else, including foreign residents of Japan.
We divided each month by its number of days, so February isn't penalised for being short. Then we compared every month with that prefecture's own yearly average.
A month counts as double-quiet when both groups are below 90% of their yearly average.
What we found
- 37 of 47 prefectures have at least one double-quiet month.
- January is the most common, in 24 prefectures. Nationally, January is not quiet for foreign visitors: it sits almost exactly at their yearly average (99.7%). But in many individual prefectures, both groups dip together. One possible reason is that January falls after the New Year holidays and before the spring travel season. The data can't confirm this.
- June is the surprise, in 18 prefectures. Foreign visitors thin out after April and May, and Japanese travellers wait for the summer holidays. June is also the rainy season in most of Japan (Hokkaido is the main exception), which our numbers can't separate from other reasons.
- February comes third, with 12 prefectures.
- Japan as a whole has no double-quiet month. The national quiet periods of the two groups don't overlap. You only find them prefecture by prefecture.
Ten prefectures with no month when both groups dip together
In these prefectures, no month had both groups below 90% of their average: Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima, Gunma, Chiba, Tokyo, Aichi, Osaka, Fukuoka and Saga.
They fall into two kinds:
- Big cities and business hubs (Tokyo, Osaka, Aichi, Fukuoka, Chiba). Total guest nights stay steady all year, between about 89% and 117% of the yearly average every month.
- Prefectures where the two calendars run against each other (Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima, Gunma, Saga). Foreign guests do drop, to between 50% of average (Fukushima) and 73% (Miyagi) in their quietest month. But Japanese guests arrive in those months. In all ten prefectures, the two groups' monthly figures are negatively correlated over the year, though only weakly in some (−0.15 in Fukuoka). The relationship is clearest in Gunma (−0.62) and in Fukushima and Saga (−0.51).
The full list
Each line shows the double-quiet month(s), and how far below average each group was. For example, "Jan: 73% / 86%" means foreign guests per day were at 73% of the prefecture's yearly average, and Japanese guests at 86%.
| Prefecture | Double-quiet month(s) | Foreign / Japanese guests, % of yearly average |
|---|---|---|
| Hokkaido | Apr, Nov | Apr: 59% / 71%; Nov: 62% / 89% |
| Aomori | Mar | Mar: 51% / 77% |
| Akita | Mar, Dec | Mar: 74% / 73%; Dec: 70% / 73% |
| Yamagata | Apr | Apr: 65% / 84% |
| Ibaraki | Jan, Jun | Jan: 60% / 83%; Jun: 77% / 89% |
| Tochigi | Jan, Feb | Jan: 75% / 72%; Feb: 87% / 79% |
| Saitama | Jan | Jan: 82% / 85% |
| Kanagawa | Jan, Jun, Sep | Jan: 79% / 81%; Jun: 86% / 84%; Sep: 88% / 84% |
| Niigata | Apr, Jun † | Apr: 59% / 81%; Jun†: 46% / 85% |
| Toyama | Jan, Feb, Mar, Dec | Jan: 75% / 63%; Feb: 69% / 73%; Mar: 57% / 87%; Dec: 71% / 86% |
| Ishikawa | Jan, Feb, Jun | Jan: 85% / 70%; Feb: 81% / 83%; Jun: 77% / 86% |
| Fukui † | Jun | Jun: 82% / 81% |
| Yamanashi | Jun | Jun: 85% / 74% |
| Nagano | Mar, Jun, Nov | Mar: 89% / 83%; Jun: 50% / 82%; Nov: 82% / 89% |
| Gifu | Jun | Jun: 67% / 81% |
| Shizuoka | Jan | Jan: 73% / 86% |
| Mie | Jan, Feb | Jan: 56% / 81%; Feb: 51% / 80% |
| Shiga | Jan, Jun | Jan: 84% / 71%; Jun: 83% / 82% |
| Kyoto | Jan | Jan: 73% / 86% |
| Hyogo | Jan | Jan: 79% / 83% |
| Nara | Jan, Feb | Jan: 68% / 67%; Feb: 75% / 78% |
| Wakayama | Jan, Feb | Jan: 53% / 78%; Feb: 45% / 85% |
| Tottori | Jan, Feb | Jan: 75% / 72%; Feb: 75% / 80% |
| Shimane | Jan, Feb | Jan: 58% / 65%; Feb: 57% / 69% |
| Okayama | Jan | Jan: 75% / 78% |
| Hiroshima | Jan, Feb | Jan: 52% / 74%; Feb: 51% / 86% |
| Yamaguchi | Jun | Jun: 86% / 86% |
| Tokushima | Jan, Feb, Jun | Jan: 72% / 75%; Feb: 74% / 89%; Jun: 83% / 81% |
| Kagawa | Jan, Feb, Jun | Jan: 78% / 75%; Feb: 80% / 83%; Jun: 77% / 89% |
| Ehime | Jan, Jul | Jan: 86% / 88%; Jul: 85% / 88% |
| Kochi | Jan, Feb, Jun, Dec | Jan: 67% / 72%; Feb: 82% / 82%; Jun: 82% / 79%; Dec: 84% / 84% |
| Nagasaki | Jun, Sep | Jun: 83% / 78%; Sep: 83% / 89% |
| Kumamoto | Jan, Jun | Jan: 81% / 79%; Jun: 83% / 80% |
| Oita | Jun, Jul | Jun: 79% / 83%; Jul: 71% / 87% |
| Miyazaki | Jan, Jun, Sep | Jan: 86% / 84%; Jun: 76% / 81%; Sep: 73% / 82% |
| Kagoshima | Jun | Jun: 66% / 84% |
| Okinawa | Jan, Dec | Jan: 80% / 76%; Dec: 66% / 85% |
How to use this
- For a quieter trip in general, the list above is a better guide than "fewest foreign visitors" alone, because it accounts for Japanese holiday seasons too.
- June is worth a second look for many regions, if you can accept the weather risk. In Nagano, for example, June foreign guests were at half their yearly average and Japanese guests at 82%.
- For big cities, timing matters less. Tokyo and Osaka never empty out. Choosing the month there mostly changes who your fellow guests are, not how many.
What this data can't tell you
- Hotel nights, not people. Day-trippers and people staying with friends aren't counted, so a sight can be busy in a double-quiet month.
- Monthly averages. Holidays and festivals inside a month aren't visible.
- One year. These are 2025 figures. 2025 had the Osaka Expo (13 April to 13 October), and the Lunar New Year fell in late January.
- No prices or weather. A month can be quiet because it is hot, rainy or expensive.
Sources and method
- Source: Japan Tourism Agency (観光庁), Overnight Travel Statistics Survey (宿泊旅行統計調査), 2025 full-year confirmed results, table 2 (第2表), all lodging types. File: 002010340.xlsx, downloaded 29 September 2026.
- Calculation: guest nights per day for each group and month, compared with the prefecture's 12-month average. Percentages are rounded down, so a month shown as 89% really is below the 90% line.
- Checks: the 47 prefectures add up to the national total within rounding.
- Sampling error: the agency publishes standard error rates by prefecture and month. Two prefectures in the list have foreign-visitor figures with rates of 30% or more in some months: Niigata (May–November) and Fukui (March and June–September). Their June entries are marked † and should be treated as approximate (Niigata's April figure is not affected). Those months also feed each prefecture's yearly average. The agency doesn't publish separate standard errors for guests living in Japan.
- Yearly average means the average of the 12 monthly per-day figures.
More detail on the method page. Month-by-month numbers for every prefecture are in the calendar.