Sushi, ski holidays and shopping are back on the agenda from October 11 as Japan allows individual visitors to enter the country and does away with much of its existing border control measures
Good news has arrived for many Singaporeans because Japan has finally announced that it will be removing a significant portion of its Covid-19 border controls and allowing individual visitors to enter the country from October 11, according to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
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Japan will also be reinstating visa waivers, Kishida said at a press conference on September 22 in New York. He added that the cap on daily arrivals in Japan will also end.
This move comes just as the yen slumps to its lowest levels against the dollar in almost a quarter of a century (basically, this means that Japan is now a very inexpensive place to visit). Discounts for domestic travel will also be introduced at the same time, Kishida added, which makes Japan even more attractive as a tourist destination.
The influx of tourists that Japan expects as these measures ease will help airlines, hotels and retailers to bounce back from the pandemic.
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Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno also added this week that the government was considering a change to the law that would enable hotels to turn away guests who refuse to comply with infection control measures.
The news comes just weeks after it was announced that Japan would allow non-guided package tours from all countries and that it will also more than double the daily entry caps as it begins to ease strict Covid-19 border controls.
The daily entry cap was raised to 50,000 people from September 7 from the current number of 20,000. Japan also announced then that it would do away with its requirement to show a negative Covid-19 result to enter the country for travellers who have received three vaccine doses.
Prior to Covid-19, Japan allowed visitors from 68 countries and regions, including the United States and Singapore, to stay for as long as 90 days without a visa. It saw a whopping 32 million visitors in 2019 which slumped to a low of 246,000 last year.
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