So I'm here just to do an emergency livestream because I've read the news that has come across the wire, there's a link in the description.

So you can see that I'm actually right now in Nagano and a Japanese, Yo con I traveled here yesterday driving 4.5 hours from Tokyo to film an episode here, never mind about that.

We have a big piece of news.

Japan is finally going to be reopening the borders.

Um more importantly than that, a government official recently acknowledged, I think it might be the first time in a very long time that a government official acknowledged That there were 150,000 students waiting to enter the country with Visas.

I think there was just so much pressure coming from abroad and from a lot of you who have been waiting to get into Japan for so long that the government finally initiated this kind of late and for the next five minutes or so, I want, I want to kind of talk about what is happening, what's going to be going on and this beautiful room that I'm in, I'm actually leaving in about 10 minutes.

So I have a lot of time here.

Something a beautiful futon, look how comfortable that is, it is as comfortable as it looks.

All right, let me sit down here.

I hope that the wifi signal is a little bit better and we have a massive amount of snow here, which is, is absolutely beautiful.

Hopefully it does snow a little bit more because it adds a lot more drama to the episode.

Alright, so the plans are not official and we don't actually know what's going to be happening until thursday when Prime Minister Kishida announces how they're going to be rolling this out in the specific details.

But you can assume that it's going to be students and business travelers, especially business travelers before the students because this is sort of what makes the country work.

What we've been seeing over the last couple of months, more students are losing interest in Japan.

They're actually going to neighboring countries like Taiwan like Korea, like even Hong kong some of them are even going to to Australia and other places.

I don't even know what the situation is, but just a lot of westerners are getting very frustrated with, with um not just Westerners, people nearby here in um okay, well it looks like the signal is very weak.

People nearby in these countries like Korea and Taiwan are very frustrated too because a lot of them had visas to come here Now from March, it's going to be opening I guess gradually.

But one of the pieces of information that was really interested in this news article was that they're dropping the quarantine which was um 14 days.

Then it was cut down the 10 days that it was raised back up to 14 days because the only crown and now they're lowering it back to seven days and then they're going to get rid of it completely in March for people that have been vaccinated three times and test negative for pcr tests on entry, which makes sense.

I'm not sure where the government had all the money to pay for hotels for Thousands of travelers coming into Japan returnees, mostly Japanese citizens and people like me, residents who already have visas and lives here were allowed to return.

But it wasn't always like that the road from 2022 now and they did start to ease the border a couple of a couple of months ago and they were going in that direction.

But omicron threw a wrench in it.

So before everybody rejoices and you start making your travel plans, I want you to consider though, I want you to consider that this can also change again, we don't know if a new variants gonna be coming, we don't know what the situation is going to be like in two months and this has been the case from 2020 all the way down to 2022.

So before you put your trips and you start planning for summer and fall, please wait for the details on this.

And if you do want to book your ticket to get ahead of everybody else, make sure you get insurance because you might have to cancel those tickets and make sure they are refundable.

Um because you could lose a lot, but a lot of you have already lost a lot now, I don't think that Japan is gonna lose a lot of people are gonna lose a lot of interest in Japan because of this and probably about two or three weeks after they reopen.

It's almost all forgotten and um people go back to the mindset that they had before that this is an amazing country to travel around and see some amazing places.

Mr jimmy writes in here, I'm not holding my breath on booking a trip.

Alright, don't, don't hold your breath anymore, go ahead and either you can, if you give up on it or you decide to come, I'm pretty sure that this summer is going to be hopping for Japan for Japan and there will be procedures in place now before I go before I leave and go to breakfast and then get back to this location shoot and then I had to, to film at nine a.m. which is an hour away, little bit over an hour away.

The reason why Japan had this travel ban was mostly political and it's, I talked with a lot of people here in Japan about this, most of the voters and it does make it, if you think about it, it does make logical sense to and and it, most of the voters are older, most of them don't have anything to gain by having foreign visitors coming into Japan, most people don't even care, but there is a significant part of the economy that does and when international businesses start to pull out of Japan because they can't get parts because there aren't enough flights coming into Japan creates a huge disaster.

Um then the government starts to listen but I think they listened more to the voters who are like look if you start bringing in piles of people into Japan we're going to be scared and scared, voters will not vote for that party and the politicians and leaders will think we want to appease those voters before anybody else.

Because it wasn't certainly based on science 14 day quarantine made no sense in omicron because it had a 23 day, I don't know incubation period I guess you can call it and like it's over by the time a week is done for a lot of people.

So it didn't make scientific sense to continue the way they were going.

And in fact this omicron is already raging throughout Japan right now.

In fact it's um maybe a tougher place right now than the United States because the U.

S.

State Department issued a travel warning Japan based on the omicron situation here.

So I guess it doesn't really make any sense to keep the borders closed and try to protect a situation that is already out of control.

No.

Yeah absolutely does not.

Um it's it's gonna take a couple more weeks before the borders do open again procedures.

It's not just it's not just because of the uh you know desire and and just giving up on this on this um um protectionism way of life.

It just takes a long time for Japanese procedures to, to initiate because even this third shot booster vaccine rollout takes forever to get the papers rolling and everything needs to be signed and hung code.

And despite this being the Rwa era it still takes a ridiculous amount of time.

Nothing is really digital in Japan, it's still all paper based.

You can see that in the way I got my booster shot already.

It requires at least half a dozen forms to fill out which is a great reduction compared to what it used to be a long time ago like and when I say a long time ago I'm like two years ago.

So I'm just glad I didn't have to fax in my application that would have been worse.

So essentially the entry ban, we can see that it's going to be over and it is a time to rejoice.

A lot of you have been asking me when is Japan going to be opening up and this is a solid date of an opening but it's not a full opening.

I don't think tourism will, will start up at least until the, this is a guess.

Okay until like the end of april may earliest.

Alright, just because it takes that long for things to get started.

Maybe they want to get it started.

It takes this long to get to get the ball rolling.

So once the decision is made, it probably takes two months before it actually is initiated.

Um if you have any comments, please leave them down in the question.

I don't mind criticism, go ahead, criticize me all you want, but I think that it's important for people, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people that are planning the trips to come here, trying to plan their future to live here.

I need to know what's going on from inside here in Japan.

There's lots of new sources.

I put a link in the description to the one here.

250,000 people with visas have been waiting to enter Japan.

A government official acknowledged this after and and and trading rights in here.

I believe it when I see it, that's and and this is the problem because a lot of people are somewhat apprehensive and rightfully so after months and months, if not years of waiting and waiting and waiting, um we'll believe it when we see it, the details are coming on thursday according to the news article and then once we get the details and then we'll see more about the direction, but once again it's a political decision and if you have been voicing your opinion on twitter on social media telling business leaders just recently.

Business leaders from, from western countries, I just said that it's just too draconian, this is too rough, It's hurting our businesses and some places have actually pulled out of Japan then it's not about the voters, it's about the economy and that is the voters.

It's the economy stupid.

So we'll see when we believe it.

But the details coming thursday, I hope that it is in the details in the blueprints include international tourism.

I'm not sure.

I don't know if he's going to be talking about that, but tourism has opened up for neighboring countries already.

So I think it's going to be really rough for Japan not to have a blueprint that includes opening it up to international tourism even if they have quotas in the beginning, whatever they need to have some sort of blueprint so people can also plan their trips because I hope, my hope is that you did not give up on Japan and you're still interested in it because um, there's still a lot of adventure and a lot of things to see and do here in this amazing country and I hope that uh, it's still on your itinerary and if it's not, I can understand too um, john would you go to Kyoto to do coverage and how tourism has affected the city and local businesses.

I'm not really a big fan of Kyoto.

Um, I don't like that.

I'm not a, I'm not a Kyoto person, but you know, I'll go there.

I'll do it.

I don't, you know, we'll see what's going on down there.

I'm a fan of the countryside.

I'm not a fan of the um, um, um, um, you know, Kyoto hasn't has, I think they went bankrupt.

Somebody said Tony P thank you.

Except that they can't get pandemic under control in Japan.

Opening up will only spread it more.

I don't think so.

I don't think it's going to spread it more.

I think it is, it is what it is.

It's going up and it's going down and in the United States, the numbers are going down in England.

Everything, all the numbers are going down by March optimistically.

Um, I believe that opening it up to other countries is going to be, it's going to be based on the situation of the country's that are coming into Japan.

For example, if the United States has it under control, they're probably going to open up tourism to Japan because Japan has a very safe and conservative approach to it.

It's just the way it is.

So um, it's already endemic.

So yeah, it is what it is just in case rates in here.

I wouldn't call it endemic yet.

We just don't know.

But it looks like it is going in that directions Numbers go up and down JK Adventures regardless of restrictions.

That's exactly right.

Um, this virus has no passport doesn't matter and the policies were weird.

So people could come in, citizens and residents could come in, but they couldn't, My breakfast is here one second cuz I held his name.

I said, yeah, okay, let's give us a I Breakfast.

All right.

I gotta go guys leave a comment down below.

But just keep in mind that the details are coming on Thursday and I'll do another live stream in a couple of days.

I'm headed to the Monkey Park.

If you are a member or an insider, I'm gonna be doing a special live stream for you in a couple of hours.

It's just 99 cents.

See you then.