I am a little late on this news, since it was announced a few days ago, but it's still pretty important nonetheless.
Following up from my previous entry about Japan considering letting in foreign tourists, Japan has confirmed that the country will slowly begin allowing foreign tourists in starting from June 10. As I had also mentioned, 7 people from the US arrived in Japan as part of the first trials of their controlled group tours, with two different itineraries set up so far. The government is obviously starting small to see what needs to be done in the event that any one in these tour groups catches the CCP virus.
Just as a reminder though, tourists will not have free reign over where they will go and what they will do. At least, not yet anyway, and some people have drawn parallels with North Korea's controlled tours - though the reasons are completely different: One being to control the spread of the CCP virus, and the other being a means to not highlight its country in any undesirable light, despite the truth of said country being pretty much common knowledge.
Regardless of this "packaged tour" approach, Japan will be classifying countries/regions in to three categories (blue, yellow, red), with blue being the lowest risk (and currently comprised of 98 countries in this category), and red being the highest risk.
Finally, those coming from overseas will be expected to follow Japan's mask wearing policy. Many other countries have dropped their mask mandates, but Japan still hasn't. As part of the country's CCP virus countermeasures, overseas visitors will have to wear masks. I personally have no problem with this, but I can see a lot of people continue to stay from Japan because of this mask mandate.
While a complete lift of restrictions entering the country isn't on the cards yet, this is a good start. While not a perfect solution, I can only hope that the Japanese government will make necessary adjustments as overseas tourists slowly start coming back to visit Japan again.
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