Japan may allow 10,000 people per day to enter country from April

The bigger sticking point for me is the 3 PCR tests needed for re-entry.

How is this number enforced? Is it already counted into the number of airplane tickets sold? Or is it entirely possible to show up for your flight only to be told that sorry, but the guy in front of you was the last person allowed into Japan??

Thé US and 10 countries in Europe allow free passage but Japan is still ‘considering’

How wearisome Japan is…

I live in the US but can technically get into Japan because I'm on a family registry there (my wife is Japanese). However we haven't been back because we don't want to sit in a crappy hotel by the airport eating TV dinners for half of our vacation, and be under house arrest for the other half.

Anyone know what the deal its now on that front? I almost stopped paying attention.

This ANA info site might be helpful and help clear a lot of questions about traveling to/from here in general

https://www.ana.co.jp/en/jp/topics/coronavirus-travel-information/immigration/

They're smart. UK and most of the EU have lifted most Covid-19 restrictions and not surprisingly infection rates have doubled in the past week. We are not over this pandemic yet despite all the misguided wishful thinking.

But the number of people falling seriously ill or dying are very low compared to the last two years...

Most people in the US have pretty much forgotten about COVID. It's still around, but no one is worrying anymore. It's like how cold and flu viruses are out there, but most people know they won't have a significant reaction. At least the vaccinated ones.

Seems forgotten but not gone

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/#graph-deaths-daily

"April marks the start of Japan's business and school year and demand for travel normally increases at this time of year."

It's also the day that you stop using the heaters on trains, despite it being more than 22°C in many places today, proving how arbitrary these dates or. Or maybe they have evidence confirming that foreigners stop carrying the virus from April 1st. Shouldn't they not allow the gates open until 8:00 p.m., though, Japan time?

Europe has opened their doors to millions, most unvaccinated. The anti-vaxxers are probably thinking, look, no vaccine, no masks, no sanitisers, no bubbles, no infections. No one seems to be telling us infection rates anymore, very strange

You are not looking I think.

https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/europe-getting-hit-covid-resurgence-after-rushed-exit

My wife still can't visit her aged mother in Japan. This tyranny needs to end and return to the old normal.

The bigger sticking point for me is the 3 PCR tests needed for re-entry.

According to the US Embassy web site and as of March 1, if you are fully vaccinated and boosted, then you no longer need the third test and you can use public transport from the airport. So that's a bit easier. But even so, traveling to the US to visit or take care of business will require three PCR tests at a cost of about $700, so yeah, that's a problem for me.

To whom @Sanjino? As residents the borders are open. Without quarantine from most countries.

@sheikh yerboaby

I’d also like to know this. Or if there is even an answer to your questions. Seem like the airlines are just selling tickets to fill % of the planes over the very near term, and 3 + weeks out they publish “phantom” schedules that always change.

So far Japan hasn’t ever hit any of the caps that I’m aware of.

@ zoroto

they can;t separate tourists and business travelers for much longer. As it is, most business travelers can’t enter without a sponsor. I would never ask a Japanese customer to sponspor me nor would I ever go to Japan to visit just one customer. Add to that I have decade old friends in Japan. After hundreds of days in Tokyo, what am I? Business man or Tourist?

...but I can't get in to visit friends / Onsen

Hopefully after that, even if still off limits to tourists , they remove limits on incoming nontourists

How is this number enforced?

By limiting the number of available pcr tests =)

Lift all quarantine requirements on residents.

Thé US and 10 countries in Europe allow free passage but Japan is still ‘considering’

How wearisome Japan is…

They're smart. UK and most of the EU have lifted most Covid-19 restrictions and not surprisingly infection rates have doubled in the past week. We are not over this pandemic yet despite all the misguided wishful thinking.

well better be careful and act carefully.

i see nothing bad if Japan reacts slow this case.

lets wait until situation will be kind of normalized and calm.travel abroad can wait,there is no hurry abt it at all.especially when you get annoyed by some tests or some kind of vaccine passports in many places now...no way to travel and be humiliated this way...

The word to focus on is: May

You give them too much credit. I think a better estimation would be late summer or autumn. Mayhaps even late autumn.

J-gov's milking the pandemic for all it's worth to keep out those dirty, disease ridden, troublemaking foreigners while allowing their own people to toddle off to all four corners of the globe for study and business. The blatant hypocrisy is astonishing.

Super over controls by Japan Gov.

Foreigners are allowed to visit North Korea but still not in Japan.

Snail's pace.

sure - downvote me. it is a fact.

They’re not economic refugees. They’re white Christians for the most part. Lots of children. They’re not Chinese and they’re not Muslims. It might be a more tolerable solution for assimilation and helping with Japan’s declining birthrate. Why not turn them loose on the disappearing farms in the shrinking rural areas of Japan? You could get two birds with one stone that way.

As long as the open by Autumn....

The word to focus on is: May