Driving Japan Tour is Paul McCartney's only Japanese concert tour in the 21st century so far.

The Japan Tourism Agency (観光庁, Kankō-chō^?), abbreviated JTA, is an organization which was set up on October 1, 2008 as an extra-ministerial bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

Japan Tourism Agency seated itself with intentions to stimulate local economies and to further international mutual understanding, following legislation of Basic Act on Promotion of Tourism Nation (in December 2006, to wholly revise Tourism Basic Act), committee resolutions in both Houses of the Diet in the legislation process, and decision at a Cabinet meeting of Basic Plan (in June 2007) which was drawn as provided by the Basic Act. One legal basis of the Agency is Act for Establishment of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

The two committee resolutions (of almost the same contents) are made by the Committee on Land and Transport of each House of the Diet, to point out eight issues on which the government should take appropriate measures when it enforces the Basic Act. In the issue No. 8 it was stated that the government should make efforts to set up tourism agency or so.

Japan ⁱ/dʒəˈpæn/ (Japanese: 日本 Nihon or Nippon; formally 日本国  Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku, literally the State of Japan) is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters that make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin", which is why Japan is sometimes referred to as the "Land of the Rising Sun".

Japan is an archipelago of 6,852 islands. The four largest islands are Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū and Shikoku, together accounting for ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area. Japan has the world's tenth-largest population, with over 127 million people. The Greater Tokyo Area, which includes the de facto capital city of Tokyo and several surrounding prefectures, is the largest metropolitan area in the world, with over 30 million residents.

Archaeological research indicates that people lived in Japan as early as the Upper Paleolithic period. The first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other nations followed by long periods of isolation has characterized Japan's history. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victory in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since adopting its revised constitution in 1947, Japan has maintained a unitary constitutional monarchy with an emperor and an elected parliament called the Diet.

Chris Rea ( /ˈriːə/ REE-ə; born Christopher Anton Rea, 4 March 1951) is an English singer-songwriter, recognisable for his distinctive, husky voice and slide guitar playing. The British Hit Singles & Albums stated that Rea was "one of the most popular UK singer-songwriters of the late 1980s. He was already a major European star by the time he finally cracked the UK Top 10 with his 18th chart entry; "The Road to Hell (Part 2)". By 2009, Rea had sold more than 30 million albums worldwide.

He is well known for his 1978 hit song "Fool (If You Think It's Over)" that charted #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent three weeks at #1 on the U.S. Billboard adult contemporary chart. The song was later covered by Elkie Brooks and was a top 20 hit in the UK.

Although Rea had limited success in the United States, two of his albums, The Road to Hell and Auberge, topped the UK Albums Chart. The book Guinness Rockopedia described him as a "gravel-voiced guitar stalwart".

Rea was born in Middlesbrough, England, the son of ice cream producer Camillo Rea who together with his brother Gaetano owned an ice cream factory and ran twenty-one cafés.