We are all familiar with Covid-19 and the current pandemic that has impacted our lives since early 2020. This post isn’t going to be about the history of Covid and how it spread across the globe. In fact, I feel I am a bit late writing a post regarding Covid since it’s had a huge impact on my life in terms of living, travel, and work. I’ve been in Japan going on three years now and honestly Covid has impacted my life every day. As the saying goes, “There is light at the end of the tunnel,” I finally feel it is near. I Dream of the day my family and friends can visit Japan. After all, I love playing tour guide and can’t wait to show them around this beautiful country.
I read news articles daily and get status updates from co-workers on Covid-19. I see countries around the world that have already opened their borders to tourism. I hope Japan will soon follow and open borders so travel can slowly get back to normal. As vaccination rates increase in Japan, my hopes are that restrictions will loosen and all of our dreams of normality will become a reality. I am writing this post to inform everyone on the current vaccination status and Japan Covid-19 updates as they become available to us.
I will make updates to this post as soon as I receive updated and reliable information.
Vaccination Rates information comes from Our World in Data
Japan Vaccination Rate = 82.8%
Japan COVID-19 Updates
Most of the updates I receive are either from co-workers who are from Japan or news articles like Japan Today
April 29, 2023 – As of April 29, Covid-19 has been downgraded to flu status. There is no longer a need to show proof of vaccination upon entering the country and Japan is completely open for travel.
October 11, 2022 – As of October 11, Japan is open to visa free travel. Years of being closed due to Covid, Japan has officially opened to independent travels. If fully vaccinated, tourists do not need to show a negative test or anything upon entry. If tourists are not vaccinated, a negative test still needs to be presented at the airport prior to entering Japan. Welcome to Japan!
August 24, 2022 – Not a whole lot of new news has came out regarding Covid updates in Japan, until today. Starting September, those who have had the Covid vaccine and booster will be allowed in Japan. There is still a cap on the number of people allowed to visit. The packaged tours is still in effect. Although this is great news for me living in Japan, it’s still far from 100% open to tourism.
June 11, 2022 – As of yesterday June 10th, Japan has began welcoming more tourists into the country and increased the daily cap of visitors to 20,000. Normal tourism is still not allowed so hold off on purchasing tickets. Right now, only guided tours are allowed from travelers from 98 countries.
May 6, 2022 – Several sources say that Japan is looking into easing their restrictions for tourism starting in June. There have not been any official announcements on what the easing of restrictions will look like or what the exact date will be. Like everything else, Japan will do it in stages, I assume they will up the limit on visitors from other countries from the current 10,000 and maybe allow visitors from certain countries. As always, it is a step in the right direction, I’m seeing this as a positive direction.
April 26, 2022 – Japan’s “Stealth Reopening.” Interesting word choice. Still no tourists but family members can visit local residents in Japan.
April 8, 2022 – Japan is said to have lifted an entry ban to 106 countries. This does not include tourists. This new update is very confusing. Basically, nothing has changed.
March 22, 2022 – Tuesday, Japan has ended the quasi state of emergency that has been in place since January 8th. While most of Japan was no longer under any restrictions, 18 Prefectures were still under a quasi state of emergency. Within Japan, there are currently no emergency measures.
March 6, 2022 – As of March 1st, Japan is allowing 5,000 entrants a day. This is mainly for workers and students. Sorry, no tourists yet! Japan is considering increasing the number to 7,000 entrants a day. Again, this is a step in the right direction.
February 16, 2022 – Is this the light at the end of the tunnel? Japan is considering opening its borders next month to 5,000 daily entrants. I am not sure if it is to students and workers only or if it is for everyone. There is nothing set in stone yet, but the Prime Minister of Japan will hold a conference tomorrow, Thursday February 17th to explain the plan.
February 9, 2022 – Cases are still on the rise throughout Japan. Over 92,000 new cases were recorded in a single day. There were 159 new deaths related to the virus which is a record high.
January 26, 2022 – There is still an uptick in cases. Today, there were over 71,000 new cases. More then 14,000 new cases in Tokyo with 18 people hospitalized with severe cases. Okinawa has had around 1,250 new cases today. There were a total of 32 deaths related to COVID-19.
January 13, 2022 – Cases are still sky rocketing. In one day, Tokyo has seen more then 3,124 cases. Okinawa has recorded 1,817 new cases, and there have been upwards to 18,673 new cases in all of Japan.
January 5, 2022 – Tuesday there were just over 200 cases in Okinawa and today, January 5, there are over 600 new cases. This is the highest it’s been since August and we had several months of prior to January where we had close to no cases.
January 4, 2022 – Japan has seen an uptick in cases recently. The latest include 1,151 new Covid cases. Okinawa has seen 225 new cases.
November 29, 2021 – Because of the new variant that has been detected, Japan has banned foreign nationals from entering the country.
November 25, 2021 – On Monday, November 22, Japan had a record low of new cases at 50 and two deaths, throughout the whole country. Tokyo only had 6 new cases.
November 2, 2021 – It was announced that Japan might reduce the length of quarantine from 10 days to 3 days for business travelers and foreign students. This statement might be released next week. This is a huge step in the right direction.
October 31, 2021 – Restaurant and Bar restriction are set to loosen after October 31, in Okinawa. What does this mean? Restaurants and bars can get back to their normal business hours.
October 28, 2021 – Tokyo, has reported only 21 new cases and 177 new cases in all of Japan. This is huge figuring Tokyo metro area has 38 million people and Japan has a total population of nearly 126 million people.
Starting next week, Japan will start to ease restrictions when it comes to bigger events like sport arenas and concerts.
October 22, 2021 – Tokyo, Osaka, and other larger cities are said to have lifted time restrictions on bars and restaurants. The government has asked restaurant and bar owners to limit the number of people allowed in their establishments until at least the end of November.
Okinawa is still restricting most restaurants and bars to a certain time limit. Apparently these restrictions will loosen at the end of the month of October.
October 1, 2021 – The Government of Japan declared that Covid-19 cases have declined and that the state of emergency would be lifted.
The Government, plans to ease restrictions slowly in stages. As of now many cities have time restrictions on bars and restaurants. Restaurants and bars have been told to close by 8:00 pm, usually last order is around 7:00-7:30pm.
Slow Start but Jumping Ahead
Earlier this year, when the vaccines started to roll out and other countries were vaccinating their citizens, Japan was very slow to begin the process. I feel that Japan was skeptical at first mainly since the vaccine was foreign made and Japan wanted to be certain the vaccine was safe.
I was also told that Japan was vaccinating the elderly first. Japan has an aging population, so that strategy would take forever. One of my friends here is a firefighter and at first he couldn’t even get the vaccine. Then I also heard that Japan was distributing the vaccine on a city to city basis. Say if it was available in Osaka, then only citizens from that city could receive it. People in small rural towns outside Osaka would have to wait until the vaccine was available for their town.
It seemed like overnight one day, things changed. As of lately, Japan has had one of the most successful vaccine rates in the world and are seeing sharp drops in daily cases. The Japanese government has lifted the State of Emergency and it seems as if life is slowly getting back to normal.
What it has been Like Living in Japan During the Pandemic
Honestly, it has been both a positive and negative experience. A primary goal of moving to Japan besides work was to travel around Japan and see more of Asia. I was lucky enough to fly to both Hong Kong and Taiwan before the pandemic. Three days after my trip to Taiwan is when Covid-19 was spreading quickly around the world. Ever since March of 2020, Japan has been locked down and closed their borders.
I had huge plans lined up. I had a trip booked to Guam to run a race and my first wedding anniversary to Singapore was booked, we were ready to go! Unfortunately, we had to cancel all our travel plans. I was in the process of planning a trip to India to do the Golden Triangle and spend New Years in the Philipines. All those plans were put on hold because the pandemic became very serious very quickly.
Japan and the US military placed several restrictions on their citizens and these restrictions were changing on a daily basis. Many prefectures in Japan were restricted to us, festivals were cancelled, restaurants closed, we couldn’t toast a drink with friends at the local bar, or even take public transportation, which is unfortunate because Japan has some of the best trains in the world. On a positive note, because of Covid-19, Jill and I purchased a car and have had some spectacular road trips around Japan and saw spectacular places we probably would never have visited if it weren’t for the pandemic.
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