Japan Reopens to Visitors: All Masked Up and Everywhere to Go

Closed to most visitors for nearly three years, the Japanese government announced that Covid restrictions would be removed last November allowing tourists to enter and move around the country free of the onerous requirement of joining an expensive tour group with a doctor in attendance.?Arriving passengers noticed several important changes in the country since the pandemic began: the dollar is stronger making travel cheaper; foreign tourists were starting to return; and nearly everyone wears a mask outside and in.

Land of the falling yen

Most things in Japan are 25 percent cheaper than they were pre-pandemic, thanks to a very favorable exchange rate which is unlikely to change in the coming months.??A delicious, filling lunch of curry rice or soba noodles with tempura can cost under $10. Tokyo hotels aren’t cheap but if you shop around on the Internet, you can find western-style lodging for under $200 including breakfast. Many hotels and higher-end stores offer you the choice of paying with a credit card in either U.S. dollars or Japanese yen. Choose dollars and depending on the card save even more by escaping the service charge for currency conversion which can run three or more percent of the total bill.

While protecting bank balances, use Google and Apple Maps to proceed to the route all around the country, making it easy to plot a beeline to the Kabuki theater and find sashimi along the way. Choose public transport over taxis and save even more, navigating cavernous train stations and multiple rail lines thanks to improved English signage and public address announcements about the next train and where it’s going. Some attention to the task is needed and helpful for remaining sharp during jet lag.

Also different from pre-pandemic visits are abundant craft beer options; J Pop boy bands; do-it-yourself sushi where you roll your own; sake rice wine flights with five different types mostly consumed at room temperature rather than hot; a profusion of art in public places including attractively etched manhole covers, and Buddhist temple sleepovers presided by masked monks. One bit of protocol may be helpful here. Temples are numerous throughout the country and stays usually include a vegan breakfast and dinner beautifully presented and featuring mountain vegetables, tofu, soup and rice. Temple-issued yukatas are used to visit the evening bath and doors can be locked to ensure privacy.

Do not place your yukata on the floor near the hot tub.??As you ease into the hot water, a wavelet is produced that will cover the yukata.??Rooms are not generally?heated in the wintertime, and temperatures can hover around the freezing mark in interior rooms. A guest was compelled to wear the soaking yukata to scamper back to his room via a distant corridor in what must have felt like clinging wet kelp. He was horrified that other guests, or worse, a Zen monk, would emerge from their bedroom to view this bedraggled, now see-though yukata.

Despite all, he declared the sleepover one of the highlights of his Japan visit.

Other?highlights included toilet seats?that raise their seats automatically when the user comes into view and plays classical music in addition to spraying nether body parts with a choice of?stream?intensity; and an ancient culture that endures alongside the latest industrial robots and platypus-nosed bullet trains that whisk you around the country faster than you can say Land of the Falling Yen. Japan and the rest of the world have a road to go for travel to reach volumes last experienced three years ago.

Lower airfares and more service should help.??In January, advance purchase roundtrip coach tickets from the east coast were $3500 not including a few hundred more for the highly recommended enhanced coach seats.??A last-minute economy fare on ANA was an eye-watering $6000. Look for fares to tumble in the spring as airlines increase capacity.??American citizens no long need a visa but anyone entering Japan must be Covid-free and present evidence of receiving two boosters. The Japanese government provides online forms and an app for uploading them prior to arrival.??The aim is to save time at Tokyo’s airports, and it does for the most part.

Bring your best “face underwear”

In Japan today everyone on the street including foreign visitors seems to wear a mask. Yet they are not required, except in some public spaces, and the government wants people to loosen up a little. The people aren’t listening. Masks are ubiquitous. They’re referred to as “face underwear,” an everyday necessity. There is something mysterious about looking at millions of people and seeing only the top half of their faces.

Why the clinging to face masks with Covid seemingly on the wane? Pre-pandemic, many Japanese people don a mask when they have a cold, mainly because they don’t want others including strangers to catch it. Japan is a close-knit society where attending to the feelings and safety of others are core values. Foreign visitors seem to accept the practice if not the values behind them, perhaps preferring not to be the “nail that sticks up gets pounded down,” as the Japanese proverb goes.?

Conformity has its virtues.

It doesn’t mean that masks need to be boring. There are Pokémon-themed masks, ones with colored ear straps, masks that look like Japanese scroll paintings, and masks with faux lacy trim resembling the underwear that people joke about.

Marketers have taken notice and an ad campaign for an optical lens manufacturer touts a fogless product while wearing glasses with a mask. A young woman is featured looking triumphant as others around her struggle to see clearly over their masks, designer quality of course, suggesting that masks may not disappear soon.

Other Covid prevention measures are more omnipresent than in the U.S. Signs in elevators instruct you not to speak while inside. Your temperature is taken by a device at the entrance of many public buildings including museums and some hotels. Many restaurants have plastic screens between tables. Everywhere there is hand sanitizers. Need a place to put your mask while eating? Restaurants provide a mask holder, which keeps everything sanitary and neat.?

Whether any of these precautions work seems beside the point. The collective effort is the point, and there’s no denying that the death rate in Japan from Covid is relatively low, though the virus continues to circulate and opening borders carries unknown risks. Authorities were alarmed recently when thirty percent of travelers on flights from China tested positive though most were asymptomatic. Chinese tourists comprise a big chunk of foreign visitors and tend to spend lavishly during their Japan holidays. In early January, the government required tourists arriving from China to submit negative Covid test results before departure.

Social distancing? The spaced footprints and other reminders were everywhere, but the crowds mobbing shrines and temples during the New year holidays suggest that rules can be situationally bent even in heavily rules-based societies.?

When all is said and done, the masks are a minor irritant and provide insight into another culture with norms very different than in the US. Everything about Japan that’s worth visiting still exists and in some ways is more accessible?

Japan and the rest of the world have a road to go for travel to reach volumes last experienced three years ago. Still, Japan has recovered about 40 percent of its tourist traffic in the last couple of months and expects to see gradual increases during 2023.?This is good news for cities like the ancient capital city of Kyoto that has long had a love/hate relationship with foreign visitors, who in the past irked residents by increasing traffic, creating blight and engaging in culturally insensitive behavior like lying on the tatami mats of sacred temples despite warning signs in English. Now faced with bankruptcy, Kyoto is more ready to embrace visitors from afar. Some taxis now have signs saying, “This taxi welcomes foreign visitors.”

Watching the multitudes visiting sacred places to offer prayers on the first day of the Year of the Rabbit and seeing a smattering of non-Japanese in the crowd for the first time in several years, is a reminder of the importance of robust international travel as a means of increasing cultural understanding and tolerance towards others. An insidious virus has confined members of human tribes to their camps. Free to intermingle again, many people, grounded and isolated for years won’t miss the opportunity even while masked.

Preparing to fly back to the U.S. on a packed flight, the purser announced that face masks were optional, as if to say: "We know what you been through in Japan and you’re in a different country now.” Most of the passengers listened politely and kept their masks on. However, on arrival at the aptly named Newark Liberty International Airport, there was not a mask in sight. And nobody bowed to the arriving passengers.?

Doug Barry teaches at George Washington University