The Foreign Ministry is advising people planning to spend the holidays abroad to be alert to crime.

According to the ministry, of the 16.83 million Japanese traveling overseas in 2004, only 6,400, or 0.04 percent, reported being the victim of crime.

The number represents a 10 percent decline from 2002, although the number of people traveling abroad was about the same. The ministry did not compile figures for 2003 because the number of people going abroad that year fell sharply due to the war in Iraq and the outbreak of SARS.