[The Epoch Times, May 31, 2022](Reported by Zhang Zhongyuan, reporter from the Epoch Times Special Department) Japan will resume accepting foreign tourists to visit Japan from June 10. With some major cities in China still closed, it may be difficult for Chinese tourists to travel to Japan in a short period of time.
The Japanese government has decided to relax measures at border crossings from June 1 and increase the daily limit of entry from 10,000 to 20,000. Starting from June 10, tourism entry will be liberalized, and initially only tour groups accompanied by guides will be accepted. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said in a speech in Tokyo on May 26 that the Japanese government will continue to monitor the infection situation of the epidemic and strive to accept the same number of tourists as in normal times in stages.
Currently only international flights are allowed to take off and land at 5 airports including Haneda, and international flight operations at New Chitose in Hokkaido and Naha in Okinawa will be restarted in June.
Before preparing to accept foreign tourists, the Japanese government divided countries and regions into three categories of “blue, yellow, and red” in order of the risk of Omicron virus inflow from low to high.
Japan will exempt 98 “blue” countries and regions with the lowest risk of infection, including the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and South Korea, including Japanese returning home, from testing upon entry and home isolation. This is the lifting of the ban on Japanese tourists that has been interrupted for about two years by the global outbreak, in order to revive the regional economy that has been sluggish due to the epidemic.
According to statistics from the Japan National Tourism Organization, in 2019 before the epidemic, the number of foreign tourists visiting Japan was 31.88 million. However, due to border crossing measures and cross-border movement restrictions in various countries that accompany the CCP’s new crown epidemic, it will be reduced to 250,000 in 2021.
The depreciation of the yen, which has hit a 20-year low, will be an opportunity to restore tourism demand in Japan. Former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who has been working to increase tourists to Japan, pointed out that “the benefits of the devaluation of the yen should be further utilized.” Encourage the Japanese government to “promote the entry of tourists while taking effective border measures.”
Chinese people like to travel. Before the outbreak, according to the “Basic Situation of the Tourism Market in 2019” released by the China Tourism Academy, in 2019, the number of domestic tourists in China reached 6.006 billion, an increase of 8.4% over the same period of the previous year; the total number of inbound and outbound tourists 300 million passengers, a year-on-year increase of 3.1%.
Xu Qingyun (pseudonym), a resident of Shanghai’s Changning District, told The Epoch Times, “Before, the CCP officials have been propagating that China is the safest during the epidemic. What is China saying about free testing, free vaccines, and people who are still alive and other lies to deceive Chinese people. We were locked at home for more than 70 days. Now, when you can’t even get out of the gate of the community. Other countries have allowed foreign tourists to enter and travel, and this is the gap in reality.”
Editor in charge: Lian Shuhua