bombarded by a better parking manners leaflet campaign.

A fussy push to spare the capital from

a supposed road-clogging surfeit of foreign tourists

But will it be the traffic wardens or the Bank of Japan

that clears the streets first?

The congestion peril may be exaggerated

but the underlying numbers are not.

Japan's inbound tourism boom continued to pace last year

with the visitor tally coming in just shy of the 20 million mark.

A quarter of those were from Mainland China.

107% increase over 2014.

analyst at an era predicted another 22% gain

in overall tourist number by the end of 2016

And see the total surpassing 30 million by the time the Tokyo Olympics open in 2020.

Even more striking is the rising tourist spending, up 71% in 2015

and at 3.5 trillion yen,

now ranked in value alongside some of Japan's most famous export industries

auto parts, steel products, and electronic components.

Brokers sighting benefits for retail, transport, and property sectors

heavily pitch the tourism story in their efforts to convince reluctant global fund manages

to pile back into Japan's stock market.

The fly in the ointment here is the yen

and the tendency of more bullish observers

to under estimate the price sensitivity of Chinese shoppers

at 120 yen to the dollar, a Cartier watch was cheaper in Tokyo than in Seoul or Hong Kong

according to sales staff in Tokyo's Ginza district

the math still work at current levels of 113 yen to the dollar

but start to fall apart if the Japanese currency heads much higher

Since the Bank of Japan's negative rates announcement in January,

the yen has flatly defied the governor's gambit and strengthened.

Some now expected it to break 110 yen to the dollar over the next couple of months

After 3 years supporting the economics story with its weakness

the yen supply and demand fundementals changed last year.

argued analyst of J.P. Morgan

Retained corporate earnings abroad of being repatriated and investment trusts,

the board record 17 trillion yen in overseas assets last year

[but] are expected to start on winding some of that.

The BOJ's two-day policy meeting ends on Tuesday, and very few economists expect it to move.

Currency markets are on a hair trigger,

but so too are Mr. and Mrs. Zheng of Guangzhou,

currently planning where to go this summer.