Japan is set to start accepting and fulfilling foreign visas (all except tourist visas) starting March 1st. This is great news, as many companies have been starved for staff, spouses have been denied access and people with working visas have been unable to get them filled due to pandemic restrictions, exacerbated by the appearance of the Omicron variant in Japan.
On February 17th at 7PM, Prime Minister Kishida announced the new quarantine rules that would gradually open up to all visas except for tourism, which will still be highly limited for the time being.
Here are what we have been told will be the new regulations from March 1st onwards (though details are not yet published, we will update this post when they are):
- All visas except tourist visa or “automatic landing permit” for countries that don’t need a visa upon arrival will be granted again. This means people who have already received COE (Certificate of Eligibility) or work visas for Japan will have them restarted.
- The number of entrants will be raised to 5,000 per day for now (instead of 3,500)
- The amount of time needed for new entrants to quarantine has gone from 7 to 3 days, with a test to leave quarantine on day 3. Currently there is no information about whether this will be quarantine in a government facility (which we wrote about here during the early part of the omicron wave), or whether it can be done at home (self-quarantine).
- If you have been vaccinated and received a booster, and are coming from non-red listed countries (list will be published soon) you will not have to quarantine at all, and details of this will be announced shortly.
If and when things change, we will keep you updated with information here at JobsinJapan.com.
A big thank you to Alex Debs at hitotoki-travel.com, a former podcast guest, for the info.
