(Tokyo) Tourists will once again be able to admire Mount Fuji: Japan reopened its doors to foreign visitors on Tuesday, completely lifting the health restrictions in place for nearly two and a half years and counting on the fall in the yen to attract them.
Posted at 10:09 a.m.
“I’m happy to be in Tokyo, it’s a very, very old dream coming true,” rejoiced Adi Bromshtine, 69, interviewed by AFP at Tokyo-Haneda International Airport on Tuesday morning at his arrival of Israel.
Visitors from 68 countries and territories (including the European Union and the United States) have since Tuesday benefited from a visa exemption for tourist stays in Japan, provided only that they present a certificate of vaccination against the coronavirus or a negative test.
The archipelago, which had welcomed a record number of 31.9 million foreign visitors in 2019 and hoped for 40 million the following year, when the Tokyo Olympics were originally to take place, had locked its borders in the spring of 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic.
In 2021, less than 250,000 foreign visitors were able to set foot on Japanese soil and the Tokyo Olympics were held practically behind closed doors.
“We bought our tickets more than two years ago, but we had to postpone this trip three times,” explains Ngoc Hieu Nguyen, 57, who arrived on Tuesday with his wife from Toulon (France) via Munich (Germany).
The Nguyens originally planned to visit their daughter who studied in Japan for three years. In the meantime, “she returned to France but we decided to come anyway”.
Wearing a systematic mask
Japan’s drastic closure to international visitors, including for a time students and business travelers, was a measure popular at home but criticized abroad.
The Japanese government had opened the door to tourists since June, but only as part of organized trips, then for individual stays but via a travel agency.
New arrivals will have to adapt to the still very strict sanitary habits in Japan. The wearing of a mask is still systematic in transport and shops and much observed outside.
The coronavirus has killed around 45,000 people in this country of nearly 126 million people, significantly fewer than in many other industrialized states, and the prospect of reopening the floodgates to tourism has long worried local authorities.
The Japanese government has also just approved a legislative amendment which allows hotels to dismiss customers who refuse to wear the mask.
“It’s very different from London where we come from, where there are no masks,” admits Chris Irwin, 38, who arrived with his wife.
But “we are more delighted to see Japan than upset to have to wear the mask”, he adds.
” Whatever the price ”
Japan is counting on the fall of the yen, which has lost 25% of its value against the dollar since the start of the year, to attract tourists and participate in the revival of its economy.
Since the announcement at the end of September of the reopening of the Japanese borders, “we are under water, we have not had time to process all the requests” for reservations, Antoine Chanthavong of the agency told AFP. Destination Japan travel center in Paris.
Japanese airline ANA says it has seen the number of bookings increase fivefold.
Airline ticket prices can be a deterrent, however, inflated by soaring fuel prices, heavy airline losses since 2020 and the war in Ukraine that is forcing flights from Europe to bypass Russia.