Before Japan's deadly natural disasters and nuclear scare in March, 30,700 Australians had visited Japan, a jump of 6.7 per cent on the same period last year.
According to the Japan National Tourism Organisation, March visits collapsed by 46.8 per cent and the April figures will be similarly flat. The JNTO has suspended its Australian advertising.
Japan Package Tours manager Haydn Thompson said 90 per cent of his clients around the country had cancelled -- some for as late as October. "We were ready for a record season . . . Japan was having their day in the sun," Mr Thompson said.
"The Saturday, Sunday, and Monday after (the tsunami) the phone didn't stop -- most people cancelled straight away. People aren't geographical experts. All they knew was 30,000 were dead. For bookings in September and October, we couldn't convince them to wait and see.
"When Kevin Rudd told people to get out of Tokyo, people misunderstood the reason. They thought it was because of the radiation, but it was due to panic food buying and suspended train services."
The final Shinkansen, or bullet train, line to the affected Tohoku area was reopened on April 29. Mr Thompson said 60 per cent of schools had cancelled their trips for this year. Emerald Secondary College in Melbourne's east has visited its Japanese sister school Mimasaka Senior High School, between Hiroshima and Osaka in the country's southwest, for the past 15 years.
Principal Wayne Burgess said this year's September trip was still going ahead but they were monitoring the situation and might change some plans. In Japan, the situation is the same, with many frustrated by what they believed was mis-information about the impact.
Gray Line Tours said its usually packed English Tokyo tours were now only seeing a handful of visitors. At Asakusa's main shopping strip and shrine, stall owners report business has been severely down and visitors are a rare sight.
At the start of last week's Golden Week, which usually sees millions of Japanese holiday around the country and spend heavily, Japanese Foreign Affairs Minister Takeaki Matsumoto said that the World Health Organisation had agreed excessive travel restrictions were unnecessary.