The first Japanese tour group to visit northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region after the relaxation of COVID-19 travel restrictions completed their trip and flew back to Japan on Tuesday. 

The nine-day visit was organized by the Chinese Consulate-General in Osaka, which issued a notice on December 2, 2021, inviting people from Japan to travel to Xinjiang after the end of COVID-19. Though the trip cost 350,000 yen (about $2,465) per person, the invitation still attracted 1,028 applications in less than a month.

The first tour group comprised 20 Japanese tourists. During their stay in Xinjiang since June 19, they visited five cities: Urumqi, Turpan, Korla, Aksu and Kashgar, where they visited scenic spots, museums, cotton fields, factories, schools, mosques and homes of several residents.

Many Japanese visitors said on social media that their personal experience was very different from how the region is projected in Japanese and Western media.

Ryugo Moritaka, 66, had looked forward to visiting Xinjiang for a long time. In December 2021, after hearing about the trip plan, he had immediately applied. Before his arrival, his wife was very concerned about the security situation in Xinjiang, but after he arrived in the region, he told his wife that he felt very safe.

During his stay in Urumqi, Moritaka visited a square near his hotel, where he saw residents practicing tai chi, dancing, walking their dogs and playing with shuttlecocks. As a photographer, Moritaka loves to take pictures of people as he believes their facial expressions and body postures reflect their feelings. Moritaka described what he saw as "true happiness and satisfaction."

Akihiko Inoue, another Japanese tourist, visited a textile factory where workers operated automated machines, and a cotton field, where sowing of 303 acres of cotton fields took two days and spraying pesticides only took five hours. He was amazed by the highly mechanized farmland and said it's very different from the "forced labor" claims hyped up by Japanese and Western media. He will share his experience on social media, he said, letting more people know about Xinjiang.

Yumi Watabe, 33, a skiing coach from Hakuba, Japan, was also a member of the tour group. She recorded her trip on her Twitter account by posting videos and photos of various fruits, roasted lamb, the Huoyan Mountain in Turpan and the corpse of Loulan Beauty that remained buried in the desert for thousands of years and is now displayed at a local museum.

The delicious food and splendid landscapes attracted many netizens, though some of them called Watabe's posts "propaganda" for the Chinese government. In response, Watabe clarified that she only shared her own views and what she saw during the trip, and those netizens could not prove her wrong with inaccurate media reports on the region.

Watabe said that some Japanese people have concerns about China's ethnic minority groups but they should express their opinions based on what they see with their own eyes.

Over the past few years, more than 1,000 diplomats and journalists from over 100 countries and regions have visited Xinjiang, and data provides strong evidence of Xinjiang's development and prosperity.

According to official statistics, the region eliminated absolute poverty by the end of 2020. The region's GDP reached 414.952 billion yuan (about $57.5 billion) in the first quarter of this year, a year-on-year growth of 4.9 percent. It received 72.7046 million tourists in the first five months of this year, a year-on-year increase of 34.91 percent.

Chinese Consul General in Osaka Xue Jian said he hopes such trips will become a window for the Japanese to know more about Xinjiang as some Western and Japanese media's reports on Xinjiang are contrary to the truth. He also hopes for more people-to-people exchanges between China and Japan, which he believes will improve bilateral relations.