Japan

Sept 15 (Reuters) - Japan is expected to waive visa requirements for certain tourists and remove a limit on daily arrivals in October as it aims to benefit from a rebound in global tourism, Nikkei reported on Thursday.

Following the change, Japan will not require visas for short-term travelers from the United States and certain other countries, and will scrap the daily entry cap of 50,000 people, the media outlet said. (https://bit.ly/3eR8c5E)

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is expected to announce the changes in the coming days, the report said.

TOKYO, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Japan's government is planning to waive tourist visa requirements from some countries as part of a further easing of border controls enacted to stop the spread of COVID-19, Fuji News Network reported on Monday.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida may decide as early as this week on the easing, which would also allow individual travellers to visit Japan without travel agency bookings, FNN reported. Japan did not require tourist visas for 68 countries and regions before the pandemic.

TOKYO, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Typhoon Muifa has brought heavy downpours and gale-force winds to islands in the southwest of Japan's Okinawa, Japan's weather agency said Monday.

According to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), as of 11 a.m. local time, Typhoon Muifa was over waters 30 kilometers south of Ishigaki Island with an atmospheric pressure of 955 hectopascals at its center and maximum wind speeds of up to 216 kilometers per hour.

TOKYO, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Voters in Japan's Okinawa re-elected Denny Tamaki as governor on Sunday, public broadcaster NHK and other media said, backing an independent candidate who wants a smaller U.S. military footprint on the chain of islands near Taiwan.

The anticipated re-election of Tamaki, who was supported by a coalition of opposition parties, is a sign of pushback against Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's ruling party, which has been hit by scandal over members' ties to the Unification Church.

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s governing party said Thursday that an internal survey found that nearly half of its national lawmakers had ties to the Unification Church, in a widening controversy that emerged after the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

TOKYO, Sept 7 (NNN-NHK) – Japan today lifted the daily entry cap on arrivals to the country from 20,000 to 50,000, in a bid to bolster the ailing tourism sector, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Also effective today, travellers coming to Japan will be exempt from taking COVID-19 tests 72 hours before departure, if they have received three vaccination shots.

Japan has been looking to bring its entrance protocols, once the most rigid among the Group of Seven (G7) major developed nations, in line with other major economies.

TOKYO, Sept 1 (NNN-NHK) – Japan’s government departments submitted yesterday, their general-account budget requests, for fiscal 2023, totaling over 110 trillion yen (790 billion U.S. dollars), with defence spending hitting a record high.

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Wednesday his ruling party will cut ties with the Unification Church following a widening scandal triggered by former leader Shinzo Abe’s assassination last month, and apologized for causing the loss of public trust in politics.

Widespread cozy ties between members of Kishida’s governing Liberal Democratic Party, many of them belonging to Abe’s faction, and the South Korean-born church have surfaced since Abe was shot to death while giving a campaign speech in July.

29 August 2022; MEMO: Japan has pledged to support Africa's bid to secure a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council in order to "address the historical injustice" committed against the continent.

"Japan reiterates its determination to redress the historical injustice against Africa of not being represented through a permanent membership on the Security Council," Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told the Tokyo International Conference on African Development in Tunis on Sunday.

TOKYO, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- The latest opinion poll has shown that the disapproval rate of the Japanese government headed by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida jumped to 39 percent, a record high since Kishida took office in October 2021, Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported on Monday.