theonlyherb comments

Not that its any better, but what can be seen there seems to be earthquake and fire damage, not from a Tsunami.

@Kaede2017

Actually as the article mentions now still is a decent to avoid the big chinese crowds. Not that many there yet. Which i experienced myself 2 weeks ago.

As far as the Covid bureaucracy goes, that was very simple back in march. Literally just downloaded the app, registered there and uploaded vaccination certificate. Also could do the immigration and customs forms right in the app (which you usually got paper forms for on the plane, or had to do in airport).

The whole arrival process was in fact the fastest i ever had in japan. But a late arriving flight and not many people helped ;)

Actually finished visiting all 47 prefectures this trip.

From the perspective of an EU/US traveller "only" leaving 200k (not to mention 160k) per trip and traveller seems rather low.

Ofc thats just a statistical average. I assume a lot of asians from close by countries lower that average with short or even weekend trips.

That said having just visited i would have thought that there were a lot of europeans. I noticed them a lot more than in years before covid.

Even ran in some chinese group crowds but otherwise there were a lot less indeed.

In regards to the JR pass. For many light users that will indeed mean no more pass. For heavy rail travellers with a full program (esp in green) it still will be worth it.

On my last trip even the new prices would not have amounted to half the non pass costs. But that was very rail heavy and certainly far above the norm.

For average travellers its a bit of a shame. Economically it might make sense for JR though.

It is however certainly contraproductive towards the idea to get more people into the countryside.

Because as a traveller the main means if transportation is the train, i guess.

As comparison example the next biggest country/economy be GDP, Germany.

About 84mill People in Germany.

11m+ foreigners living there. German is of course more accessible than Japanese, but not exactly one of the most easy languages either. And like in Japan, you sort of have to speak the local language (you get further with only English than in japan though).

Obviously a lot of the foreigners there are just EU citizens who don't even need Visa.

The main difference is that in Germany its not just so much cheap labor. Germany pays more in general and people there have a higher purchasing power than in Japan.

Japan is just so attractive for many Asians as its the closest of the big economies. But in reality if compared to other G7 nations there are not many foreign nationals working/living in Japan.