Japan opening up

Masks still required in public places, trains, in crowds of any kind, etc. The airlines are also opening up more flights as a result.

 

Spent 3 days in Tokyo and just came back this morning. In fact, Japan never actually had any law to mask up during the entire pandemic except for in airports and the airplanes. All other businesses were of course free to set their own policy but most never had strict requirement. I have several close friends in Japan that's been living there through the entirety of the pandemic and this is what they told me.

Fast forward to now: still no requirement and even the airports and airplanes no longer have any requirements. I didn't wear a mask on my flight to or from Japan no did I wear one at the airport. The only time I was ever asked to put on a mask was in a fully-booked airport luxury bus from Tokyo to Narita. Even so there were people that didn't mask up and the guy who was going around telling people to mask up didn't seem to care.

I'd say about 90% of the general population wore mask properly; 8% wore incorrectly (chin mask, nose exposed, etc), and the 2% didn't wear at all. I was in that 8% most of the time but when I went to bars or clubs I was in that 2% (or when I didn't feel like it anywhere). 2% was mostly local Japanese and not foreigners. No one seemed to notice or care about that 2%. I never got a dirty/weird/surprise look when I didn't wear a mask.

This is the BEST time to go to Japan right now because the number of tourists is still very low and dollar is super strong. Also Japan didn't experience the crazy inflation that the western countries experienced the last couple years. The prices in yen were exact same as I remembered from 2019.