Japan gears up for Muslim Visitors

TOKYO - Prayer rooms, hijabs made from local silk and even halal-certified whale meat are appearing in Japan as tourism bosses wake up to the growing demand from Muslim travellers.

For a largely homogeneous country with only around 100,000 practising Muslims, that means groping its way through unfamiliar customs as it looks to tap a growing market to help it double the number of overseas visitors by 2020.

"Muslim travellers still do not feel comfortable here," Ibrahim Haji Ahmad Badawi, head of Malaysian food company Brahim, told AFP at a recent seminar on halal tourism in Tokyo. "The government seems to have understood this."

Last year, seminars such as this one were held in 20 different regions in Japan, where hoteliers and restaurateurs were invited to learn how to cater to Muslims.