On Oct 11th Japan reopened to visitors! We spent 3 days in Kyoto, one in Kobe, and 3 days in Kinosaki Onsen town. We loved Kyoto and Kobe as well, but the internet has about one million reviews of those, so we’ve focused here on Kinosaki Onsen.

Kinosaki Onsen is located in Toyooka prefecture, about a 2 hour train ride from Kyoto and Osaka. There are several express trains from each place, but they only run about once per hour or so (in the case of Kyoto, only once ever 3 hours when we were there), so be sure to do a little train line research. There are more frequent trains, but they can take 3-4 hours to get there with a lot of stops, you want the express!

Kinosaki Onsen just celebrated it’s 1,300 year anniversary as a tourist destination, and you thought Disneyland had been around forever! As American’s it’s always amazing to us that places have so much continuous history.

When you arrive by train to Kinosaki onsen you are greeted by this crab instaliation, which is a hint that this is a seafood area, and crab is it’s specialty. Even though it’s not right on the ocean, it’s only a stones throw away (you can see the ocean from the top of the ropeway).

Of course the main reason to visit any onsen town is the hot springs baths! This town has several and almost every lodging will include a pass to visit all of them (or if you are a day tripper, you can pay per onsen, or buy a pass for all of them for about ¥1,200 (in 2022). We stayed at  Kinosaki-Onsen Sinonomesou, this was a very nice ryokan just off the main street. The room was Japanese style (meaning tatami mats and futon mattresses) and spacious. The town isn’t very big, and it was less than a 150 meter walk to the canal street that you’ve probably seen in all the reviews and photos.

We didn’t get meals at the ryokan since one of us is vegetarian. Most of the ryokan meals are quite expensive, and quite worth it if you can eat the tasty local seafood and beef. Not to worry as there were many good places to eat in town. A couple of particularly good places were the seafood place (which also had a vegetable only tempura set), and the “beer and pizza” place. (If you are on a 1 week trip in Japan, don’t get pizza, but as we have lived there for years, we’ve found we really enjoy “Japanese style” pizzas. Please click on the photos in this gallery for details:

We spent 3 nights in Kinosaki onsen, including one day renting a car from Toyooka station to visit some soba shops and see some rock formations. A thing to remember in Japan is that it’s perfectly normal to rent a car for 6 or 12 hours, since so many city tourists come out and about. You do need an “International Driver’s Permit” to rent a car, or a SOFA license. The IDP is available from AAA in America for about $20, it’s just a standard document that lists your US (or host country’s) driver’s info. You can pick it up at AAA offices in the US on the spot in about 10 minutes, or by mail. We really enjoyed our trip, and we close with some photos of the outlaying areas.

It’s been over two years since we were in Japan, a long wait for them to reopen after COVID restrictions shut the country down to tourism. We entered after the Oct 11th change to the requirements. We will go over the procedure of how we entered back into the country after so long away. These requirements are current as of late Oct 2022, they may change of course if the Japanese Gov’t decides to change them, please consult official Gov’t pages (links below) for the latest info!

Booking Airlines and Hotels

We initially started our bookings before the change, as we were willing to go thru the hassles of verification to visit. We got luckily that the reduced the requirements before we visited! If you are from the United States, or most of the countries that previously allowed visa free travel (or visa on arrival to be particular), you can now enter Japan with only vaccine proof, no negative test or other items needed. From America you needed two primary shots and a booster (we both had the second booster as well). You can book flights and hotels just as pre-pandemic, although note that expedia sites (like hotels.com) had limited inventory, direct booking seemed to work better for us. The flights all have an obscene fees for fuel, but I guess they are trying to make back lost revenue.

MySOS App, required! or at least strongly recommended (Not as old May 2023, see edit)

The MySOS App is a Japanese gov’t app that they have used for most of the pandemic. Now it is used to verify your passport and Vax cert. Is it required? I’m not entirely sure, but upon landing people without it were herded into another area that looked like it took a while. I’m guessing they can manually verify your documents there.

Registering with the MySOS app was somewhat straightforward, but not instant, you have to take photos of your passport (and wait for it to be verified, took about 1 hour) and the Vax card (took about 15 minutes). All of this you can do at your leisure long before you head to the airport (we did ours about 3 weeks before). After verifying you will have a “Blue” mySOS screen, and that’s what you want! You will walk by that coral of sad people that didn’t have theirs. Edit: As of May 2023, Japan has dropped it’s Corona procedures and you can enter as before the pandemic from the US, and most other elisa countries.

Arrival at Kansai International Airport (KIX) step by step

After landing at KIX, we deplaned in a normal fashion. Then we started walking down a long walkway above the gates (the normal walkway to passport control & customs). Down the line we walked back down stairs to some empty gates. There were several pleasant people with signboards asking to show your MySOS App screen, if you were blue or green, you were pointed towards the next area, if you were red or didn’t have it you went to another holding area where it looked like they were verifying medical details. As we both had blue screens I’m not sure entirely what happens there, I assume with no Vax you are required to quarantine like the old days.

The next step was a health check area. They had about 30 desks set up and someone directed you to the next free desk. They took our temperature, and scanned the QR code from the MySOS App. This step took about 2 minutes, we were then given a “health card” which was just an A4 sheet of paper with instructions on what to do if you feel sick.

We then went back up a different set of stairs and continued on our way towards passport control and customs. Before we got there, there was another set of “health desks” that verified we had a health card. This took 5 seconds, they literally just looked that we had the a4 sheet from before, I guess to catch people trying to sneak around? Maybe it did more before the rules changed? We don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this step goes away.

After this we were in the old style passport control line, just like pre-covid. We got our tourist entry stickers and went thru customs and were out in Japan! On the whole I don’t think this took any more time than pre-COVID, as after the health checks the passport control line was still like 15 minutes from the previous flight.

Conclusion

It’s almost as easy to visit Japan today as precovid, assuming you have your 3 shots. Please come and give some tourist dollars to the hurting tourism economy!

Links

MySOS app on iphone: MySOS

Current Japanese entry requirements, including which countries need real visa: MOFA Japan

COVID-19 restriction are lifting and Okinawa is starting to get back to normal a bit, although of course there are almost no tourists! As of today, June 27th 2020, there has not been a positive case in Okinawa since April 30th, almost two full months! Congrats to us on mask use, social distancing, and staying home, now we can reap the rewards!

The Aeon Ijas mall was scheduled to open in time for Golden week, but the opening was postponed due to the Coronavirus shutdowns, but it’s open now! This is probably the third largest mall in Okinawa after the San-A Parco Mall and the Aeon Rycom Mall. It’s geared towards tourists with lots of Okinawa merch shops and the kinds of things that foreign and domestic tourists like. That doesn’t mean it’s not fun for locals! The mall has been quite crowded the last few weekends. It has a lot of fresh fish places to eat in the food court, and a similar assortment of shops to the Aeon Rycom mall. Something it has that no other mall has is a full aquarium!

DMM Kariyushi Aquarium

We left the mall and headed across the corridor to the aquarium. We pre-purchased our tickets on their web site (DMM Kariyushi website) and so could skip the short wait at the ticket counter (The line was about 10 people long and looked to be moving fast). We were reminded that masks were required at all times inside and given a squirt of disinfectant on our hands. We went into a waiting queue that was mostly empty, scanned our QR codes and lined up in a hall waiting for some magical black doors to open.

After about two minutes the doors opened and we entered into a theater room with standing bench seats, we sat down excited for what was to come! A movie with no words started with jelly fish and led us thru an adventure under water and into the air of Okinawa! It nicely set the tone for what was to come, and of course help regulate the crowds entering the aquarium proper. It has a little surprise too!

Due to the ongoing Corona virus issues, some things weren’t going, they had a touching experience area where you could touch turtles, owls, and other wildlife, but it was closed off, in addition the tanks with starfish and the like that you would normally be able to touch, you could only look. I would have liked to pet an owl, but I’m happy to miss it to have the island stay safe! No idea when these things might open up. There was a small cafe going that had soft serve ice cream, beer, soft drinks and small snacks that you could eat while enjoying looking at the largest tank. We didn’t try any as we were headed to Arashi’s to try their new vegetarian ramen! (It was better than expected and delicious!)

The Aquarium is a little expensive at ¥2,400 for an adult, ¥1,500 for children under 12 and ¥2,000 for teens. It’s not as big as the main Okinawa Aquarium, but it’s close to Naha and requires a lot less driving for most. They had a nice intro movie and then into the exhibits. They have an app for guidance and it’s nearly a must, as none of the tanks have labels! The app will provide you info in all the major languages and it quite well done. If you have checked it out, please leave us a comment! We (and other readers) love to hear your thoughts!

Info Block:

Name: DMM Kariyushi Aquarium and Aeon Ijas Mall

Google Maps link: https://goo.gl/maps/pwPFdkLWDNfoh8cc8

Cost: ¥2,400 adults, discounts for kids and teens

Website (English) : DMM Kariyushi Aquarium

Nearby to the Ashibana Outlets and lots of other shopping.