Japan ditches COVID border restrictions to welcome back foreign tourists
Tokyo — Eager to admire colorful foliage, eat sushi and go shopping, droves of tourists from abroad started arriving in Japan on Tuesday. It was a welcome influx, marking the end of more than two-years of coronavirus-fighting border restrictions that left Japan's once thriving tourism sector gasping for air.
"We got the news that we can finally come. We are really, really happy," said Nadine Lackmann, a German who was among the crowd of tourists arriving at Tokyo's Haneda airport on Tuesday.
Travelers like Lackmann were expected to deliver a sorely needed 5 trillion yen ($35 billion) boost to the world's third-largest economy, and the flood of visitors is expected to keep growing.
A daily limit of 50,000 arrivals has been nixed. Airlines have added flights in response to the full re-opening of borders. Visa-free travel was back for short-term business visits and tourism from more than 60 countries.
David Beall, a photographer based in Los Angeles who's been to Japan 12 times, said he'd already booked a flight, planning to go to Fukui, Kyoto, Osaka, and Tokyo. The last time he was in Japan was in October 2019. But it's the everyday things the American is looking forward to, like eating Japan's popular pork cutlet dish, tonkatsu.
"As cliched as it sounds, just being back in Japan after all this time is what I am most looking forward to. That, of course, includes hopefully meeting new people, eating the food that I've missed like good tonkatsu, being in nature at that time of the year, riding the trains," he said.
Japan's National Tourism Association said the country welcomed just under 32 million inbound tourists in 2019, before the pandemic struck. But as CBS News senior foreign correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports, even with the borders open, it will likely be some time before Japan's travel sector enjoys numbers like that again.
One main reason for that is China's strict "zero-COVID" policy.
Before the pandemic, almost 12 million people visited from China and Hong Kong annually, accounting for almost a third of Japan's total tourism footfall. They were big spenders, too, bringing in more than 40% of all the money forked out by international travelers in Japan in 2019, at around $33 billion.
So, while Japan rolled out the welcome mat to all travelers on Tuesday, there won't be many Chinese among them. Chinese citizens who leave their country still face lengthy quarantines when they return home. For most individual travelers, it's just not worth it, and Chinese tour companies still aren't offering international excursions.
Some Japanese regions that used to see especially large numbers of Chinese tourists, such as Shizuoka, just west of Mount Fuji, will have to start pitching their scenery and cuisine more aggressively to prospective tourists from elsewhere around the globe.
The only protocols still in place for entry to Japan are that travelers must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, with one booster, or have a negative PCR test within 72 hours of departure. Virtually all visitors from the U.S., the rest of Asia, Europe and South America who fulfill those requirements won't have to quarantine.
Visitors may have to adjust to face masks, worn by most Japanese just about everywhere outside their own homes. Many stores and restaurants require customers to wear masks and sanitize their hands. Some establishments still close early, or have shuttered completely.