Tokyo (AFP)

"My bar is booming!": Three weeks before kick-off of the World Rugby Championship in Japan, merchants from the host cities of the event rub their hands, hoping especially to seduce the 400,000 foreign fans expected.

At the "Rugby Dinner No Side Club" sports bar boasting the only Tokyo dedicated exclusively to the oval ball, its owner Takeuchi Masakazu, called "Masa", is thrilled.

"It's like a dream (...) I've received a lot of reservations for the World Cup, everything is almost complete," he said to AFP, saying that he had received emails from Japanese fans, but also New Zealand, Australian, English or French.

The 43-year-old former amateur rugby player hopes to at least double or even triple his turnover this year. He also plans to double the number of his employees during the competition, from 5 to 10 people, and has ordered "three times more beer than usual".

Elsewhere also, the call of the organizers of the World Cup to provide enough beer, essential element of a successful party of rugby fans, was taken seriously.

"We held a seminar with patrons of restaurants and bars, to ask them not to run out of beer," explains Naofumi Machidori, an official at the tourist office in Kobe (west).

"We told them they had to have three to five times more stocks" than usual, he adds, assuring that the message was well received.

- Air bowl for some regions -

Based on a study by Ernst and Young, World Cup organizers predict a contribution of 216 billion yen (1.8 billion euros) to Japan's gross domestic product this year.

A trifle in relation to the GDP of the third largest economy: nearly 550,000 billion yen in 2018 (more than 4.650 billion euros).

But with competition spread all over the country, the impact could be "really beneficial" for some remote areas of glittering megacities like Tokyo and Osaka, says Oxford Economics researcher Shigeto Nagai.

Kamaishi, a small town in the northeastern part of the country devastated by the 2011 tsunami, will host two matches of the tournament. But one could also mention Kumamoto and Oita in the southwest, or Sapporo, all the way north of the archipelago.

A real test for local tourism infrastructures before the Olympics in Tokyo next year, the Rugby World Cup is a "precious opportunity" to further diversify the flow of tourists to Japan, which today comes mainly from Asia. Mr. Nagai.

The event comes just in time as the number of tourists from South Korea is falling in Japan, amid rising tensions between the two countries.

But many will depend on the ability to understand and meet the expectations of these new visitors, mainly Western: "There is a lot of good will, but the level of English is often deplorable" in Japan, notes the economist.

- Eclipsed by the Olympics -

Another question mark concerns the Japanese public itself. Because if all the matches should be played sold out according to the organizers, rugby does not unleash the passions in the country.

In the bustling commercial district of Shinjuku in Tokyo, the public was nevertheless at the rendezvous last week at the opening of the first and main official store of the tournament: foreign tourists, but also families and white-collar Japanese.

With some 80 ephemeral outlets planned in the country, "we hope more than a million customers throughout the tournament," says Nick Price, commercial director of Legends International, the company managing the sale of derivatives of the Mondial.

"We hope most of them are locals, it's the Japan Rugby World Cup," he insists.

In Bic Camera's home appliance stores, while TV screen sales have been rising in recent times, these purchases could be explained more by the upcoming VAT increase in Japan than by the Rugby World Cup, according to a spokesman. word of the group interviewed by AFP.

Japanese consumers are "probably less aware" of this competition than the 2020 Olympics, which the local media speak much more, he believes.

© 2019 AFP