How is the Covid situation in Japan now? Do you think that Covid will be here on Earth forever?

[Shounan84]

Well I’m so sick of this covid thing. I have been waiting for a long time to visit Japan again. Does anyone know what is the situation in Japan now? Like are they about to open the boarder or no plan at all? I’m starting to think that Covid will be here forever. Every country will just need to stop the lockdown thing and learn to live with it.

 

[MikeH]

Like are they about to open the boarder

But that would made sense, so we'll know it won't happen. Next on the line: extending state of emergency until end of June. Not granting new visas for any of the students that have been admitted to the universities here nor to the business people trying to start their jobs here or wanting to come for meetings.

Instead allow 30.000 people from all over the world for Olympics. When you notice that makes no difference to the covid cases tell everyone we were successful and still continue keeping the borders closed until the vaccinations are finished in the beginning of 2022.

Then realise people still get infected and decide it doesn't matter if nobody needs to go to the hospital anymore and continue to keep the borders closed. I mean it's much better to live without those barbarians anyway.

 

[AsiaHand]

Only 5% of the local population has been vaccinated so far, and the Japanese government is denying entry permission from over 150 countries. I don't think you will see the border opening until next year, and it may still depend on the situation in each country.

 

[SatoKM]

Well I’m so sick of this covid thing. I have been waiting for a long time to visit Japan again. Does anyone know what is the situation in Japan now? Like are they about to open the boarder or no plan at all? I’m starting to think that Covid will be here forever. Every country will just need to stop the lockdown thing and learn to live with it.

It seems to me that Japan's borders will be closed until at least the end of this year.
Notice that only around 5% of the population have been vaccinated. I believe Japan is the country with the slowest vaccination program in the whole world.
Even countries in Latin America have been faster than Japan

 

[SugoiBoy]

It amazes me how badly Abe and now Suga have handled the pandemic. The LDP really needs to be voted out of office. If I were Japanese, I’d vote for almost anybody other than that lot.

 

[Frenchy]

It amazes me how badly Abe and now Suga have handled the pandemic. The LDP really needs to be voted out of office. If I were Japanese, I’d vote for almost anybody other than that lot.

Well it wasn’t so bad until the vaccine slowness. Frankly I am not sure any of us gaijins can lecture Japan on how to better handle the pandemic

 

[Keihan]

Well I’m so sick of this covid thing. I have been waiting for a long time to visit Japan again. Does anyone know what is the situation in Japan now? Like are they about to open the boarder or no plan at all? I’m starting to think that Covid will be here forever. Every country will just need to stop the lockdown thing and learn to live with it.

Most guesses around here are that Japan--particularly after the Olympics ends in epic failure and in order to recoup losses--will have to grudgingly re-open to tourism sometime in early-mid 2022. Of course, there'll probably be a list of approved countries, and most of the Western World will probably be on that list. The question you should be asking, however, is: When will the rest of the world actually WANT to visit Japan again?

Let's face it, Japan's vaccination efforts are a fucking joke. There are barely-developed countries getting vaccinated faster than Japan. And thanks to that, and the new Indian variant currently making its rounds, it's not out of the realm of possibility that major Japanese cities could be disastrous hotbeds of infection well past summer and clear into next winter, when things could get even worse. Do YOU want to visit that? I know I don't.

But there's one thing basically every virologist in America agrees on: COVID will most definitely be here forever. It'll continue changing, mutating and, hopefully, at some point regress into something resembling the coronavirus that causes the common cold. That's the hope, anyhow. But like the common cold, and common flu, it'll be back, every year, in a different new and fun form, for the rest of time. But by that point, the rat/bat/snake-eating dwellers of the Middle Kingdom will probably have unleashed two or three new pandemics on us so we'll have other things to think about.

America is approaching the point where we just reopen everything, period. The people who want to be vaccinated, largely have been vaccinated. My guess is that sometime at the end of summer or in fall, most state governments are just going to drop the mask and distancing mandates and say FUCK IT. Get back to normal life. Let the remaining idiot fucking anti-vax folks do what they want and if they get sick, oh well, fuck'em. Big Pharma will continue tweaking the vaccines, the people with brains will get their regular booster and flu shots and life will largely go back to normal. COVID and the standard flu will become almost indistinguishable. And then Americans can get back to more important things, like fighting over which presidential candidate sucks more Chinese dick or loves black/brown people more and planning for which oil-rich country we invade next and call it a humanitarian mission.

 

[hrbb]

Seems a significant amount of people are holding out for the Japanese made vaccine understandably. Aside from that the feeling is very much take it at your own risk. The only people that want borders reopened are foreigners.

 

[Figrindan]

I am vaccinated so I would gladly visit Japan any time. And the sooner the better, before it gets crowded with a bunch of other damn tourists.

 

[Keihan]

I am vaccinated so I would gladly visit Japan any time. And the sooner the better, before it gets crowded with a bunch of other damn tourists.

The shitty reality is that whenever Japan decides to let us (assuming you're American) in, that'll probably be the same time everyone else gets let in. That means you can count on seeing 100,000,000 screaming, shoving Chinese tourists stampeding through Narita the second your flight lands, in a mad rush to the nearest Don Quijote so they can pack the Duty Free line holding 11 baskets each full of tampons, condoms and cheap makeup. After all, it's been over a year and their 2020 stash is no doubt depleted by now. Kinda ironic, first they fuck the whole world by giving us a pandemic, and then the second it's over they fuck up your very first vacation to celebrate getting back to normal.

 

[Acid Burn]

The shitty reality is that whenever Japan decides to let us (assuming you're American) in, that'll probably be the same time everyone else gets let in.

What worries me is that by the time Japan reopens to foreign tourists, 鬼滅の刃 season 2, taking place in Yoshiwara, will probably have aired. With the anime’s popularity, Yoshiwara’s proximity to the touristy Sensoji, and ‘anime pilgrimages’ being a thing, I can just imagine the increase in random tourists with cameras recording walking through the area.

Just the thought of the area actually being on the radar of your random anime fan, cosplayer, YouTuber, etc. worries me. I like the solitude of walking through the streets there, with nobody really in the streets except your doormen, a guy here and there going to a soap, and random girls going to or from their job.

 

[Acid Burn]

That means you can count on seeing 100,000,000 screaming, shoving Chinese tourists stampeding through Narita the second your flight lands, in a mad rush to the nearest Don Quijote so they can pack the Duty Free line holding 11 baskets each full of tampons, condoms and cheap makeup. After all, it's been over a year and their 2020 stash is no doubt depleted by now.

Don’t forget the departures at the airport too. Luggage splayed open all over the ground trying to shove more goods into them.

 

[Sudsy]

With the anime’s popularity, Yoshiwara’s proximity to the touristy Sensoji, and ‘anime pilgrimages’ being a thing, I can just imagine the increase in random tourists with cameras recording walking through the area.

Saints add preservatives to us…

Might have to set up a weeb patrol.

 

[Keihan]

Don’t forget the departures at the airport too. Luggage splayed open all over the ground trying to shove more goods into them.

Dude, you're giving me flashbacks. Actually, it's kinda sad that it's been so long since I've been to Japan that those count as flashbacks. But that's pretty much why I stopped flying through NRT. Aside from their luggage-packing antics, the last time I left through NRT, I made the mistake of trying to use the moving walkways (with the big signs IN CHINESE asking stationary passengers to stay on one side and let people pass) to get through the terminal on a quest for canned beer, only to find that the Chinese tourists had barricaded the entire walkway with their piles of suitcases and then, even better, all sat on their suitcases; when I turned around to try getting off the Chinese behind me had done the same, so me and another pissed off obviously American male (looked like military) got to ride the entire way sandwiched between two groups of squawking, screaming Chinese and their fucking kids, too.

It's cool, though...whenever I get home and go out drinking with my friends or relatives, the almost half of whom are full or part ethnically Chinese, I'm free to drunkenly rant and rave about how much I hate Chinese tourists, because most of them hate those fuckers even more than I do.

Ironically, I still would like to visit Beijing one day. And Harbin. The women I've met from that region are fucking hot.

 

[Frenchy]

Dude, you're giving me flashbacks. Actually, it's kinda sad that it's been so long since I've been to Japan that those count as flashbacks. But that's pretty much why I stopped flying through NRT. Aside from their luggage-packing antics, the last time I left through NRT, I made the mistake of trying to use the moving walkways (with the big signs IN CHINESE asking stationary passengers to stay on one side and let people pass) to get through the terminal on a quest for canned beer, only to find that the Chinese tourists had barricaded the entire walkway with their piles of suitcases and then, even better, all sat on their suitcases; when I turned around to try getting off the Chinese behind me had done the same, so me and another pissed off obviously American male (looked like military) got to ride the entire way sandwiched between two groups of squawking, screaming Chinese and their fucking kids, too.

It's cool, though...whenever I get home and go out drinking with my friends or relatives, the almost half of whom are full or part ethnically Chinese, I'm free to drunkenly rant and rave about how much I hate Chinese tourists, because most of them hate those fuckers even more than I do.

Ironically, I still would like to visit Beijing one day. And Harbin. The women I've met from that region are fucking hot.

can’t help to wonder how the locals judged your own antics when you were in Osaka

 

[Keihan]

can’t help to wonder how the locals judged your own antics when you were in Osaka

Big difference, I say. Aside from the fact that the average Osakan is borderline-retarded and my antics generally induced a state of dumbfounded, confused stupor and/or panic...

1) When I act like an asshole in Japan (Osaka), I know I'm acting like an asshole. I'm doing it on purpose.

2) When Chinese act like assholes in Japan, they do so because they either don't know any better or, worse, don't care, because they come from a shithole country and culture and think the Japanese owe them something for the 1930s.

3) I can, upon first glance, pass for native, so that somehow makes it ok.

One might argue that the above points make me out to be the supreme asshole piece of shit, but I beg to differ. In my defense, I only behave that way in Osaka, as Osaka owes me for six years of dedicated, selfless sacrifice and also mind-numbing psychological torture. And yes, my claim is valid while the whining Chinese in Nanjing are just misguided crybabies.

I should've been an attorney. Or Prime Minister. Tenno Heika Banzai.

 

[Frenchy]

I should've been an attorney.

absolutely! You would pioneer the new legal tactic of “I did it on purpose so it’s less incriminating than if I did it unknowingly”. Hundreds of years of jurisprudence sent to the trash bin in one go. Genius.

 

[Keihan]

You would pioneer the new legal tactic of “I did it on purpose so it’s less incriminating than if I did it unknowingly”. Hundreds of years of jurisprudence sent to the trash bin in one go. Genius.

Not incriminating, but punitive. Besides, jurisprudence is overrated. The law firm of Keihan, Giuliani and Cochran would've seen to that.

 

[Mitaka]

Well it wasn’t so bad until the vaccine slowness. Frankly I am not sure any of us gaijins can lecture Japan on how to better handle the pandemic

Agree... maybe the Taiwanese can. But certainly not Europeans or Americans. We have hundreds of thousands of death. The least we can do is vaccinating the population as fast as possible. Situation for Japan is quite different, even if I wish they can vaccinate faster...

 

[UnicornHunter]

Been chatting with my LINE girl about the vaccine and she said many of her friends have warned her that the vaccines are bad and not to get it. So there is misinformed fear mongering being spread around.

 

[Rusty Trombone]

Been chatting with my LINE girl about the vaccine and she said many of her friends have warned her that the vaccines are bad and not to get it. So there is misinformed fear mongering being spread around.

Yeah a lot of young females I talk to say they same.
They are all worried about anaphylactic shock.
Even I nurse I know refused to get vaccinated.

 

[Durg50]

Yeah a lot of young females I talk to say they same.
They are all worried about anaphylactic shock.
Even I nurse I know refused to get vaccinated.

Same. I know a lot of people who are otherwise pretty happy to tow the line (ie not just contrarians or conspiracy nut-jobs, but regular mask wearing, social distancing, teleworking salarymen and houswives) arent gonna get vaccinated.

 

[MikeH]

Same. I know a lot of people who are otherwise pretty happy to tow the line (ie not just contrarians or conspiracy nut-jobs, but regular mask wearing, social distancing, teleworking salarymen and houswives) arent gonna get vaccinated.

Then again if you are a healthy and young then covid is not going to kill you anymore than our standard yearly influenza. The risks start going up only after you hit 50 and then boy, they go up fast.

 

[Sudsy]

They are all worried about anaphylactic shock.

Which isn’t a risk unless they’re actually allergic to polyethylene glycol, which they’d usually already know about since it’s in tons of common medications… like acetaminophen and ibuprofen.

 

[Keihan]

Yeah a lot of young females I talk to say they same.
They are all worried about anaphylactic shock.
Even I nurse I know refused to get vaccinated.

That's very disappointing to hear. I expect that sort of nonsense from Americans but didn't think it would be so prevalent in Japan. I assumed that like with everything else, Japanese would line up like lemmings and get their shots in an orderly fashion. Wouldn't you figure that Japanese could just look at the U.S., with over half the population vaccinated and shit getting significantly better? I mean, unless you subscribe to MAGA News Network or any of those jackass, shit-kicking conspiracy nut rags that claim "millions" have actually died from the vaccines but it's all a big cover-up.

On that note, I think Fauci went on record today saying that at our current pace, he expects to declare the pandemic "over" (in America) sometime in July. By that, I'm assuming he means that most restrictions will be lifted. He can declare whatever the fuck he wants but I'm not getting rid of my mask or Clorox wipes just yet. After we get mandatory vaccinations for all public school children and Pfizer boosters before Fall, I'll start thinking about rolling back my OCD a little bit.