Japan Officially Reopen for Independent Tourists in October 2022
Japan will reopen for the first time in these two years
Yesterday, September 22nd, as rumors suggested, Kishida took advantage of his stay in New York to make the long-awaited announcement official. Finally Japan is going to open its borders without restrictions to individual tourism from October 11th! The government intends to take advantage of the weak yen to capture fall and winter tourism demand and boost the economy by increasing the number of inbound tourists to Japan.
Japan’s previous border situation
Japan was one of the first countries to implement a total border closure at the beginning of the pandemic. Since then its border policy has been very strict, to the extent that during the first few months it vetoed entry to foreign residents leaving the country or being outside the country at the time of the closure.
Those who were allowed to enter Japan had to undergo various PCR tests upon arrival, quarantine periods in designated hotels, etc.
In recent months the current Prime Minister of Japan, Kishida and his government have been slowly easing the measures. The number of people allowed to enter the country on a daily basis has been increased, and tourism has been authorized for those traveling with travel agencies. Recently, the need for a PCR test 27 hours before flight departure was also eliminated for those who were fully vaccinated.
Japan’s border situation from October 11th
As we explained in our previous article when the first news came out on September 13, there are going to be three main points that are going to be changed.
The first change is the elimination of the restriction on the number of people that can enter the country per day. The number of people had been progressively increasing to 50,000 people per day (it had been below 10,000 people). Finally there will be no daily limitation.
The second and one of the most important points is that individual tourism is now allowed. Until now, only people coming to Japan through travel agencies were accepted. For those who usually seek to travel in the most economical way, booking their own flights and hotels, this point made them give up on the idea of coming to Japan.
The last and probably the most important point: it will not be necessary to apply for a tourist visa anymore. The travel agencies were in charge in many cases of processing these visas, but it’s a long and tiring process. Now the situation will return to the way it was before the pandemic, where many countries didn’t need a visa to enter Japan as tourists (Note: countries that needed to apply for a tourist visa before the border closure may still need one).