Japan is not Onley encouraging its residents of travel but actually paying them to travel in vacation.

All around Japan and Tokyo residents who are excluded the last couple months will be included from October first.

And as you can see behind me, I'm at Tokyo Haneda Airport right now.

Better explain all of this, but before I start like always, if you want to see what I'm doing on a daily, check out my INSTAGRAM account.

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Alright, fasten your seat belts because this video might get a little bit bumpy.

So the Japanese government earlier this July lunch a go to travel campaign worth 1.35 trillion yen, about $12.7 billion.

Basically, this government sponsored campaign offers anyone living in Japan up to 50% off all of their travel, including hotel and transportation that such as the flights and trains Justus, long as a book through one of the specified travel agencies, and this also includes foreigners living in Japan.

Each person can get up to a 20,000 yen discount per night is about 190 U.

S.

Dollars for unlimited amount of nights.

And basically this campaign goes until the funds run out, which is expected to be in early 2000 and one.

Obviously, there are some restrictions, but you can also book day trips and hotels on your own, but at a lower subsidy rate.

Nonetheless, the government is really giving people financial incentive to travel during this time.

What do you think?

Do you think it's the right move and how does it compare to your country?

Let's look around to see how this campaign is working.

So I'm at the arrival gate in the domestic terminal and you can see it's quite busy right now.

The domestic terminals have been relatively quiet early on this year, but since the government notified Tokyo residents that they would be included in the campaign, it gave many people who are on the fence about traveling a reason to start flying again.

See, most Japanese have been compliant with government safety recommendations From the start, many people stayed home these last few months and avoided going out unless absolutely necessary, such as for work or shopping for essentials.

I mean, look around in this video.

You'll be hard pressed to find a single person walking around without a mask.

But then the government decided to run this travel all over Japan without a care in the world campaign, and it sort of gave the entire country a green light to travel again.

Even before Tokyo was included in the campaign, this was especially the case a couple weeks back.

During Silver Week in Tokyo, when Japan went on a four day holiday, the domestic terminals were packed with travelers who finally needed a release after months of quarantine.

So unlike the domestic terminals, the international terminals, you'll find that a lot of the stores have either closed down temporarily or permanently.

With most international flights limited, there just isn't enough customer traffic to keep these stores open.

Pre pandemic.

All of these shops would be open, but at this time on Lee, a few remain.

You can even see that the check in counters are almost all empty.

It's a bit eerie being here compared to the domestic side.

But on Lee, Time will tell to see how Maney businesses are able to survive during this pandemic.

But let me go back a few months and explain how this whole go to travel campaign started because it didn't start off as the smoothest campaign ever before I continue on, I wanted to take a quick drink break and give a shout out to our sponsor for this video mobile Japan Sim Much better.

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Great water break.

Let's continue on.

So like many government campaigns, this one was meant with a lot of controversy, mainly because we're in the middle of a pandemic.

And many residents feared that running this campaign would increase the spread of infection.

And on top of that, some people are anger that the government was using a taxpayer money to fund this campaign.

So what the government decided to do was make it okay for everyone in Japan to travel, except for people living in Tokyo.

Hey, wait, that's me.

The reason being Tokyo had the highest number of reported infections in all of Japan, and so the Japanese government decided to start the go to travel campaign in July.

But with Tokyo excluded so Tokyo residents couldn't participate.

But on top of that, anyone living outside of Tokyo couldn't travel to Tokyo and receive the government subsidy, which again no surprise, pissed a lot of Tokyo residents off.

First of all, the reason for being excluded from the campaign didn't make a whole lot of sense, since other areas in Japan included in the campaign had a higher rate of infection than Tokyo.

At the time, areas such as Okinawa, Osaka and Fukuoka all had higher infection rates.

But of course, Tokyo would likely have the highest number of infections because they have the highest population in all of Japan.

To say the least, it was a bit unsettling for Tokyo residents that the government would encourage travel to areas with higher infection rates.

When Tokyo itself was barred from the campaign and to Tokyo, residents were also upset that they were funding.

Ah, lot of the campaign.

On average, Tokyo residents pay the most taxes in the country because they have the highest income.

And like most government campaigns, it's funded by taxpayer dollars, which finally brings us to now.

As of October 1st, Tokyo will be included in the go to travel campaign.

Mainly.

The reason being is that the campaign didn't go as well as a government expected.

It would go without including Tokyo, excluding Tokyo.

Pretty much meant that they didn't have the numbers to make an impact on domestic tourism.

So the government backtracked and finally included Tokyo in a go to travel campaign.

Well, what does that mean for the country?

For me, a reason of Tokyo It pretty much just means that the government may be paying for my next trip, but at the what risk.

So Japan's chief cabinet secretary at the time saga and now prime minister reported that 5.56 million people participated in the campaign and Onley six people were infected through the service.

Those numbers sound pretty encouraging.

What do you think?

Given those numbers, would you feel safe to travel?

But on the other hand, in this Japan Nationwide graph, you can see a sharp increase in positive cases starting in July.

Obviously, that could be a number of factors to explain the increase, but the increase itself is pretty alarming.

It's also worth noting that foreign tourists traveling into Japan are still prohibited in the coming months, though foreign residents that were outside of the Japan when the travel bans were put in place will soon be allowed back into Japan.

Finally, the go to travel campaign is the first of a four part campaign.

It will be followed by Go to Eat Campaign, Go to Events Campaign and Go to Shopping Streets Campaign.

I'm quite interested to see how these ones play out as well.

Let me know in the comments, your thoughts on all of this and how it compares to your country.

So leave you with that thanks again to Newton for helping me film this one.

And if you want to see more of these type of videos or Japan guys or anything related to Japan, hey, that's a try button and the bell button and I'll catch you guys in the next one.