In three years of running tours to Japan, I don’t think we’ve ever had one group ask us where they could get commemorative NFTs of their trip. That hasn’t stopped companies and governments in Japan from hawking the once-trendy tech.
In the West, despite having a lingering cohort of fans, NFTs have largely gone the way of the Metaverse and the Segway. In Japan, however, the technology appears to live on as a means of enticing travelers. The question is, why do so many organizations in the country think tourists give a damn?
The NFT bubble
NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, are digital commodities marked by a unique cryptographic signature. While typically an image, an NFT could ostensibly be any digital asset, including a video file, audio file, or text. Built on the same technology as blockchain and cryptocurrency, they emerged in the early 2020s as part of Web3, a push to create a more decentralized Internet.
NFTs were an attempt to bring something to the digital realm it didn’t possess: scarcity. Content creators could digitally sign their works to certify their authenticity. Buyers could brag that they possessed an “original” work of art. In some cases, buying an NFT also gave purchasers access to an exclusive community, much like a membership at a swanky social club.
The hype was extraordinary. An NFT of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet sold for a whopping $2.9M. Singer Justin Bieber sold an NFT he owned from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection for $1.3M.
Critics, however, mocked the dubious tech as a bubble that would burst. People mocked NFT buyers on social media by posting copies of their NFTs and claiming they owned them, too.
The critics were right. The NFT speculative bubble burst in 2023. A report in September 2023 from the company dappGambl found that 95% of NFT collections were financially worthless.
You can have a Myaku-Myaku NFT, because…uhhh…
While the bubble may have collapsed elsewhere, companies in Japan are still convincing other companies and governments that NFTs are the wave of the future.
Exhibit A: The Osaka Expo is officially hawking its own NFT featuring a picture of mascot/eldritch horror Myaku-Myaku. The Expo is hawking the giveaway as a so-called “soul-bound token,” a type of NFT that can never be digitally transferred and thus is forever bound to the person to whom it’s issued. Visitors can grab the token from the official Osaka Expo app between October 6th and October 13th.
The question is: Will they? And why would they?
The thing is, this isn’t even the first Expo NFT. In April 2025, the Japan National Travel Organization (JNTO) released its “Japonism Moment” art collection, depicting Japan through the eyes of tourists. Between April and June, it distributed ten original artworks as NFTs to commemorate the opening of the Expo.
It’s not just Osaka Expo. JTB, Japan’s largest tourism agency, just announced this week that they’ve launched a new initiative with Fujitsu and Toda Construction to foster tourism to the city of Echizen in Fukui Prefecture. As part of this, JTB and Fujitsu are proposing issuing a “visual coin” for Echizen as an NFT – a promotion gimmick the companies have been using since 2023 to bring in top-dollar tourists.
Does it actually work, though?
NFT enthusiasts worldwide are gung-ho about NFTs for travel. To date, however, Japan appears to be the largest hotbed of activity. Bitcoin companies like Rural are attempting to cash in with “innovations” such as their LocalNFT, or NFTs that tie a promotional character to a specific travel region or destination.
To be fair, this use of NFTs differs from the ape-driven market frenzy. The goal isn’t to create a pump-and-dump scheme that alleviates suckers of the burden of their hard-earned money. Rather, it’s to create a unique incentive to visit a region that tourists might not otherwise visit.
Given Japan’s increasing concerns around overtourism, this is a noble goal. We’ve seen in a few cases already how spreading the tourist love around the country can help revive towns that have started to fade away as young Japanese people flee to the cities.
The question is, do these programs actually draw tourists in? I can’t find any data that would support that contention. It’s also hard to tell if these programs are the start of a new trend or the lingering after-effect of the 2023 NFT boom.
Japan is often stereotyped as the country that “lives in 2050.” In reality, it’s plagued by outdated technology, from fax machines to hanko seals to old web browsers. Tech industry experts in Japan lament the country’s “Galapagos” status, a phenomenon where Japanese companies cling to home-grown solutions long after the rest of the world has embraced an alternative standard.
Absent any data, I’ll make a daring speculation that NFTs are doing next to nothing to promote regional tourism in Japan. Hopefully, the Japanese government and travel industry will move on to more practical promotion methods rather than continue to flog a dead ape.
Discover the “unseen” side of Japan
Japan is on everyone’s travel bucket list. Sadly, many end up going to the same places as everyone else. That can turn what could have been a fun, once-in-a-lifetime experience into an exhausting battle with crowds.
We started Unseen Japan Tours for the same reason we started Unseen Japan: To give people a unique glimpse into Japan they can’t get anywhere else. Let us create a custom itinerary of hard-to-find spots centered on your interests. We can also serve as your guides and interpreters, taking you to places that non-Japanese-speaking tourists usually can’t access.
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Sources
The non-fungible bubble: how NFTs inoculated the industry against greed. forklog
The vast majority of NFTs are now worthless, new report shows. Guardian
EXPO2025デジタルウォレット利用者への感謝企画として特別な感謝のNFT「ミャクーン！」とSBTをプレゼント！ Expo 2025
訪日外国人観光客の誘客拡大に向けて、 NFTを活用した観光DXプロジェクト開始 ―越前市版スマートシティで「ECHIZENクエスト」体験をスタート！―. JTB
日本政府観光局、万博の特別NFTを配布、全国10地域の文化を水墨画で、地方への誘客促進. TravelVoice
