Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed the desire to meet Russia's President Vladimir Putin in his native Yamaguchi Prefecture (south-west of Honshu), Kyodo said on Saturday, according to TASS.

"I would like to invite President Putin to come here," he said at a meeting with head of Yamaguchi's election commission.

On May 17, shortly after Putin's meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Sochi, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov told journalists that the head of the Russian state might visit Japan until the end of the year.

Russia's State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin said during his recent visit to Tokyo that Putin might visit Japan before the end of this year.