Steve Goldun comments

The JAL pilot almost certainly had lots of experience with the airport, the particular runways and air traffic control and have to guess that the Coast Guad pilot didn’t. Maybe had no experience with Haneda and/or little experience with commercial airports at all.

Stephen King has it exactly right. Twitter should be paying people with that many followers, not the other way around.

Totally making this up as they go along. I don’t see how a statistically insignificant number of foreign visitors can possibly negatively impact Japan’s Covid situation, especially when they can simply mandate that visitors wear masks and take other precautions as a condition for issuing a visa. Something they’re not doing for 125 million Japanese residents. At least they seem to be moving forward.

Steven MccarthyToday  08:37 am JST

Time to tighten the screws on the borders …. Literally as soon as they relaxed the borders …. Covid started getting worse and has since exploded… coincidental? No not at all…. Scientific proof of a bad move …. Currently, Japan cannot even take care of residents with Covid…. No need to pile on more cases .

Uh, no. Covid entered Japan at pretty much the same time as everywhere else over two years ago. The same variant is infecting people at the same rate right now as it is everywhere else. The idea that a statistically insignificant number of foreigners entering Japan are the reason for Japan’s high infection rate isn’t science at all, it’s ignorance.

This is quite obviously not about Covid anymore. Hopefully next months elections will change things.

They have to find their accused guilty (do not want to disturb that 99% conviction rate) but the evidence is super super sketchy (read mostly imaginary).

As bad as that 99% conviction rate sounds, please bear in mind that the US system is pretty damn close with @95% of all cases ending in (guilty) plea deals, usually after an aggressive prosecution bullies defendants into them by threatening maximum sentences and ruinously expensive legal bills at trial.

I think it’s pretty clear that the Japanese government would rather just have it’s borders closed anyway.

Requiring vaccination to travel is nothing new. And is qualifying for a visa for a place like North Korea, Russia; Brazil etc any different? The host country is vetting you and qualifying here is relatively simple, get the shot. I live in the US where pretty much anyone can come and go right now but I’d gladly trade that for much less severe Covid problem Japan is experiencing.