Just landed to KIX today, exhausted. What a crazy journey.

After 2 months in France to spend the winter holiday season, I’m here now, in a roughly 20 meter square hotel room for 6 days with the whole family without the possibility to make a step beyond the door landing. Over the course of these 2 months I saw the quarantine regulations in Japan evolving from a 10 days at a facility of your choice to 3 then 6 days quarantine at a designated facility (hotel) with the remaining of the 14 days to be done at your location.

The hotel room

Things didn’t started well from flight departure where my check-in failed on top of flights being cancelled multiple times. Reason being I didn’t take my connection flight from CDG (Paris) to LYS (Lyon) with miserable scheduled times I didn’t wish for in the first place. I wasn’t even aware that skipping a connection flight incur penalties (125 euros - or something like that) and would prevent further check-ins or adding options. Beware…

Onboard everything went fine, staff was kind and friendly and meals quality was more than acceptable.

Then, arrival in Japan. I had already a good stack of papers prior to departure with a custom RT-PCR certificate mandated by the Ministry of Health, a written pledge, multiple questionnaires with the usual customs declarations. But I wasn’t prepared to get twice as much paper after completing the Covid maze - to be honest, I can’t even remember every check I went through.

Here is a rough idea of what you need to go through:

  1. Passeport / documents check
  2. Saliva test
  3. Generated QR (online personal information questionaire) and paper questionaire checks
  4. Personal ID assignment and facilities quarantine checks (length, food allergies, etc…)
  5. Saliva test waiting / result
  6. User Tracking app (MySOS) installation and verification by agent
  7. Hand over the written pledge and final documents check

and from there the standard:

  • Immigration control
  • Luggage delivery
  • Customs

Now, I also remember changing some colored neck straps from orange to nothing to green, however I didn’t get the point or what it was used for.

It took me about 2.5 hours to get over the whole process and not many people on the flight - most of them were in transit. Of course we were negative for the saliva test so I have no idea what’s coming for you if you are positive. They probably send you back where you came from with a private jet - just kidding…

Next stage, the hotel quarantine. As I come back from France I have currently a 6 days quarantine to do at the hotel as mentioned above (and the remaining at home). The transportation to the hotel was done by bus partitioned with plexiglass between seats rows. It seems there are two different facilities that I’m aware of you can end up to: APA hotel and Nikko hotel next to the airport. I’m not quite sure what criteria make you go to one or the other. But once arrived, staff guide you through a special entry and assign you a room with the rules to apply during the stay.

Once accompanied to your room, you won’t be able to make a step out of it until told to do so. Door isn’t locked in my case but I noticed security guards in the corridor. Got 2 meals for the rest of the day, almost cold and not that tasty unfortunately. I will consider some delivery tomorrow (if possible).

Dinner at the hotel

With the whole dedicated staff and operations no wonder where Japan taxes go. Does such measures will be effective long term?

Let’s see what’s up for tomorrow.