Resumption of tourism - Latest info?

Tourist on package tour has tested positive so your has been cancelled, you can forget full opening anytime soon.

Any predictions? What would be the next step? When? Any leaks ☺️

In a saner world than the one we live in my prediction would be that this will be the thing that finally makes the Japanese government and people realise that the virus isn�ft anywhere near as controllable as they wish it was. Then they might just rip the bandaid off.

Every chance they caught covid from a Japanese person. Says more about Japan than it does foreign tourists.

I agree with @Liz, it's just as possible they caught Covid in Japan than that they brought Covid with them. Japan is not a Covid free country.

I will say in my own personal anecdotal experience, everyone I know that has gotten breakthrough Covid (aka Covid once fully vaccinated) have not been all that sick, with the worst case being the equivalent of an unpleasant flu, but none even close to requiring hospitalization, including people with pre-existing conditions i.e. "weak bodies" and I do know several people, myself included, who were 100% exposed to Covid post vaccination, but did not get Covid (and yes, everyone I know did multiple tests and not just home tests.) and some of us would also qualify as "weak bodied" or having pre-existing conditions.

Well, apparently the infected individual got to Japan on May 27 and first had symptoms on May 30, so they easily could have caught it on the plane to Japan or right before leaving Thailand. The current variant has a fairly short incubation period, but May 28 would probably be the latest they could have caught it in order to have symptoms and test positive on May 30, so �c. It will be interesting to see if any of the other people in the group get infected. News and details seem to be kind of sparse right now, and it will be quite a few days before the extent of spread is known. (Remember the Diamond Princess?) Hopefully it will just be the one case and nobody else caught it, which would validate that the vaccination and masking protocols are reasonably protective. But the current variants are terribly contagious, even if most people don�ft get very sick from them.

Surely the government and the health authorities do not expect that there will be no cases of covid in any people traveling under the controls to commence June 10. The purpose of the experimental tours was probably more to try out isolation and quarantine procedures if anyone developed symptoms. Apparently that is happening. And there are no plans to change the June 10 deadline.

In my mind, the interesting question is how things will go once the number of tours becomes much greater, and they are opened up to essentially anyone who wants to join them, and not just carefully selected individuals. I get the sense that the guidelines for the travel companies running the tours are not fully developed yet, and I wonder what mechanisms will be in place for dealing with tour-group members who are lax about masking or who fail to honestly report symptoms.

Hopefully this won�ft go on for several more years. Covid is not going to go away anytime soon, and foreign tourists are not going to suddenly become more socially conscious than they ever were before. Restricting them to managed group tours will certainly reduce the amount of bad behavior that occurs, but unless there are robust enforcement provisions in place, there will still be a lot of noncompliance with rules, I�fm sure. Even though the vast majority of foreign tourists in Japan are decent and behave responsibly, there are always some bad apples, and the problem now is that the consequences of bad behavior are more threatening to the natives than they were before. And the spotlight will be shining.

I get the sense that the guidelines for the travel companies running the tours are not fully developed yet
Currently there are few guidelines, and nothing (in theory) stopping me from offering tours in a couple of weeks. But, there are some obvious gaps in the information released, and from a pragmatic point of view, I am waiting for some of those to be plugged before proceeding.

Also, FYI, the rate of positive cases at the Japanese border has generally been around 1% over the last year - and all of those cases had negative PCR tests before getting on a flight. The fact that one (out of 50 test tourists) has a case of covid is not (statistically) unusual.

A further point t remember, the GoJ wanted to check infection rates post-GW. Well, week-on-week case numbers continue to fall. (Dropping from 40k/day to around 20k/day.)

Well, JCT, if I reach the point where I would actually consider a package tour as an alternative to not getting back into Japan at all, I hope you will be offering them. Best wishes to you if you decide to!

But to be honest, I would feel infinitely safer not being on a tour. It will be bad enough worrying about catching covid on a 12-hour flight, but being closely confined to the same hotels, restaurants, tour buses, and tourist venues with the same group of people for the entire time? The whole idea of it gives me the creeps.

They've already said they're contuning with resuming group tours from 10th June. Literally nothing has changed, and if anything, this means they can't pretend their horrible group tour idea won't result in more covid cases to some degree. Guidance will have to be made that will end up applying when regular tourism resumes, much like the requirement to take out private health insurance will.

Being in a group actually increases chances for travelers to get Covid and infect the whole group. Can you also imagine how the locals may react to see such a group? Full of germs, virus spreading...? Hopefully the idea of controlled tours won't be longer than two months. Looks like Japan introduces new guidelines every 2 months so hopefully they will be more tourist-friendly soon...

Well, if it were a really small group then it would be almost like a traveling �gbubble�h or family, in which case it would feel a lot safer (especially after the first three or four full days) than a larger group of 10 or more. Once you start increasing the group size, you start increasing chances of someone getting infected, and then everyone else will be breathing that person�fs exhaled air for possibly hours every day. But small group tours with a full-time �gattendant�h are by nature going to be pretty expensive.

I could see participating in a small, custom-planned tour, but a standard package tour that has a bunch of people seems unsavory to me. At any rate, we tourists really don�ft get to decide what the rules are going to be. They appear to be designed to allay concerns of Japanese people by making it seem like the foreign tourists are under control, and whether the restrictions increase risks to the tourists themselves is not really a consideration. Until they change the rules, we can either choose to go on pre-arranged guided tours or else wait. Hopefully not too terribly long, but I�fm not all that optimistic.

My strong sense is that a large percentage of people in the U.S. and many other countries really don�ft worry about catching covid anymore. In many parts of the U.S. almost nobody wears masks these days. I personally still worry about catching the virus (and it would be a huge nuisance if I got it on a trip) and possibly getting long covid, and I worry about inadvertently infecting others. (Simply put, I do not want to be a link in that chain.) But I am afraid that the attitudes of those who aren�ft worried about covid are going to make them feel dismissive, resentful, or (at best) patronizing towards Japanese people who do still worry about covid and who are for the most part continuing to wear masks everywhere, even in many places outside. This isn�ft going to help matters, unfortunately.

Covid at this stage normalized for many. I booked my ticket for 1 of October not thinking much about the restrictions. My mistake. At this stage I'm just disappointed and not sure if I want to go to Japan at all. My previous trip was amazing and I wanted go back. Now... I just can't stop thinking that Japanese people actually don't want to have tourists, that we are not welcome there and the perception of the gajins is that we are contagious 😔

I am afraid that the attitudes of those who aren�ft worried about covid are going to make them feel dismissive, resentful, or (at best) patronizing towards Japanese people who do still worry about covid.

I am concerned that this is likely to cause all sorts of friction and only prolong the antagonism. But mindsets (on either side) are not readily changed.

We are all going to have to be patient, I think. Even when the restrictions are lifted, we cannot expect things to suddenly and magically return to the way they were before the pandemic.

@Kim, I hear you loud and clear. For those companies that run big groups, then, yes being with a horde of 50-60 people would be a nightmare. Note, some companies list their "small groups" as 23 people (thinking of something I saw offered by JTB a while back). And certainly those running bus tours want to fill all of those seats. I'm glad I am not in that space.
In any event, the information available to me remains quite murky and how the "rules" operate in practice remains unclear. That is not helped by the slow drip-feed of information. As reported this morning in Kyodo news, the Government will be releasing guidelines for tours on 7th June, so everyone has at least another week to wait. Plus, a different report suggested (as many have speculated before) that PM Kishida will "aggressively" accelerate the reopening of tourism if (when) the LDP wins the upper house election.

JCT thank you for the update. That is really interesting and useful. Keep us posted please.

@Max - if you wanted the Kyodo link, it is at https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/05/674e6bff7cb2-urgent-more-re...
As I have mentioned in previous posts, a lot of information is on the MHLW site rather than the MoFA site. I have also spent a couple of days working with another tour company (based in Fukuoka) talking to them about the changes and what it means for our respective businesses, and it has been useful having them also look at the material - they have had some choice comments about the lack of clarity, but we are hopeful it will become clearer sooner rather than later (but it is frustrating).

Hello JCT.

I am very much looking forward to any and all updates you can give to us.

I should preface that I'm not 'strictly' looking to be escorted, but in the off chance that this madness is still ongoing in October, I would need to start thinking about finding an authorized party that -in addition to taking my business, and depending on what rules are in place at the time-, would be willing to explore a middle ground with me.

This would be my fourth short term visit to Japan.

Just want to make any international non-married couples aware that as of today, you can apply for a visa to see your partner. I believe you're meant to be engaged as a minimum, but in reality, I don't think it's going to be much of an issue as it would be hard to prove either way.

See here for more details; https://t.co/9WNJLzaoFi

I still wear an FFP2 mask on public transport, in shops etc.
As a result (+luck + vaccinations), I haven't been infected.
In Japan I would do exactly the same and where I live there are less cases than in Japan so that I would be deemed more of a risk than Japanese has no logic.
I hope , post-election, they stop this and use logic to try and minimise Covid, not playing on xenophobia.
As it's a foregone conclusion (election) anyway, no idea why they are waiting.

I have a ticket flying to Japan in Jan 2023. Hopefully there will be realistic options for entering a country as an individual tourist by then. If they still require us to join North Korean tour, at least my ticket refundable.

In Kyodo news: "Japan to compile big extra budget for stimulus after summer election

TOKYO - Japan is planning to compile a supplementary budget worth more than 10 trillion yen ($77 billion) after this summer's upper house election to finance measures aimed at stimulating the economy and mitigating the impact of rising prices, government sources said Friday."

A big part of driving their economy is tourism... Hopefully soon, after the elections, there will be some good news for us.