JAPAN will trial small group tours with travellers from Australia, Singapore, Thailand and the United States from this month, said the government said today, as it experiments with relaxing strict Covid-19 border rules.

The country’s borders have been closed to almost all arrivals since the spring of 2020, in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Authorities only recently started allowing some students and business visitors to enter.

There are no plans to fully lift border restrictions, with the trial involving tourists from only the four countries who join package tours with predetermined itineraries, according to the Japan Tourism Agency (JTA).

“Japanese travel companies will organise the tours and local guides will accompany them,” said an agency official.

Participants will have to be triple-vaccinated against the coronavirus and have private medical insurance.

There will be no change to the current testing requirements for entering Japan, with visitors having to submit a negative Covid-19 test taken 72 hours before departure and test again upon arrival.

JTA is currently discussing the plan with regions that are expected to be of interest to foreign tourists, said the official.

How many tourists will be able to join each tour is yet to be decided.

The trial was initially planned late last year, but was put on hold when the Omicron variant spread.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he wants to ease border control measures, but moves are expected to proceed slowly, with strong public support for the current restrictions.

A daily cap on people entering the country will reportedly be doubled to 20,000 next month, though the tour groups are not expected to be counted in the figure, said local media.

Japan welcomed a record 31.9 million foreign visitors in 2019, and was on track to achieve its goal of 40 million in 2020 before the pandemic hit. – AFP, May 17, 2022.