It Could Be Years Before You Can Visit Japan

Above, the Kachidoki Bridge over the Sumida River in Tokyo. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

People around the world, including students, business people and tourists are wondering when Japan will be open to foreigners again.

That is the $10,000 question. Nobody knows, not even the Japanese government, apparently.

The is an article in The Telegraph (U.K.) that says it "could be years before you can visit Japan." That not good.

The article starts with (and some snippets):

Japan, Telegraph Travel readers’ second favourite country, will shortly be pretty in pink – its cities and parks awash with sakura, or cherry blossom. Vanishingly few international visitors, however, will enjoy the spectacle. This will be the third springtime since the country’s stringent Covid-19 travel ban was put in place, and – unlike fellow Australia and New Zealand – a reopening plan has not been revealed.   

Japan’s travel ban stretches back to early April 2020. Only returning Japanese citizens and permanent residents (and, briefly, Olympians) have been permitted to enter, and they are currently subjected to hotel quarantine for six days upon arrival. There was a flicker of optimism that the ban might be eased late last year but omicron’s rise quickly put paid to this. In 2019, a record 31.9 million visitors entered Japan but by 2021 this had collapsed to 245,000, largely those with an exemption to visit. 

No date has been given by the Japanese government for relaxing the ban and some commentators have suggested the continued exclusion of foreigners taps into a siege mentality reminiscent of Sakoku (meaning “locked country”) – the isolationist period that characterised Japan’s Edo period from 1603-1867 under largely xenophobic shogunate rule. Yet the travel ban is looking increasingly futile as omicron cases surge despite the absence of foreign nationals. The 104,000 new daily infections recorded on February 3 was its highest since the pandemic began.  

 

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