Consider "George," a foreign resident of Japan who told Debito.org his experience returning to Japan from Europe this month. As before, George's Japanese spouse only had to appear at the border with a Japanese passport, take a Covid (PCR) test administered by the Japanese government, and then be let in for hospitalization or quarantine. But for George, the procedure had become Kafkaesque. Before departing Europe, he had to:
1) Apply at the nearest Japanese embassy or consulate for physical paper documents, i.e., "Certificate of Testing for Covid-19" and "Letter of Confirmation of Submitting Necessary Documentation for Re-Entry into Japan." The certificate has to be applied for because, the embassy told him, the Japanese government wants the option to cancel the program at any time (thereby reinstating the blanket ban).
2) Physically report to the embassy to pick up the paperwork. He had to appear in person so the embassy could check his passport and residency status; never mind the potential distance between consular missions. If you want this, you'll make the trip.
3) Get your PCR test in the foreign country, but do it to Japanese standards. Japanese bureaucrats are very pernickety about this–the doctor or laboratory carrying out the test must physically sign and stamp the actual paperwork issued by the Japanese embassy. Japan's bureaucrats will not accept paperwork issued by the lab alone. They will also not accept PCR results that have been downloaded from the lab's webpage, or sent by email, which is their usual way of reporting. This means you must, after receiving your negative results, go back to the lab and have them fill Japan's forms out. George noted that in his part of Europe, this was particularly difficult. The regular health care systems don't test asymptomatic people. People wanting to be tested nonetheless must pay a princely sum, plus find a lab that would fill out the Japanese paperwork afterwards. Most wouldn't.
4) Depart for Japan within 72 hours of your PCR test. A negative PCR result starts a ticking clock. Not only must you lose time going back to the lab for signed paperwork, but also you have to buy a plane ticket within that window, at often double or triple the price of a plane ticket reserved in advance. George in fact bought his cheaper plane tickets weeks beforehand, hoping for a negative PCR result. If it had turned out to be positive, he would have lost his ticket. The PCR was, fortunately, negative, so the saga continues.
5) Head for Japan. At the boarding gate, airlines will have additional forms to fill out about your riskiness as a passenger, as will the Japanese government before you land. These documents are on the Honor System, so there is no clear way for them to verify if you're actually infected.
6) Go through Japan Immigration. According to George, in addition to at least two rounds of document checking, Japan administers another PCR test on the spot. It all took some time, but he got through. Again, George's spouse was exempt from all this, except for the PCR spot test.
7) Then go into quarantine for two weeks, but you are forbidden to use public transportation to get to your hotel. Figure out your own way there.
What's the conclusion to draw here, aside from the embedded racism of treating only one of these people, traveling together under the same conditions, as the real contagion risk?