I have been sitting back monitoring the Japan blanket travel ban on foreigners and am observing a silent long-term problem manifesting for Japan. I think Japan's LDP ruling politicians think they can do things and get away with it, thinking they not going to get blowback or fallout as a result. Those tactics may work against docile Japanese, but the global citizen world is not going to take these actions by Japan sitting down and the global citizens will unite and strike back – this is where Japan seriously screwed up. 

I want to state my position before I move on. I was not interested in this issue because of the timing. I had no interest in going to Japan during last fall 2021 or winter months 2022 and was waiting for the weather to get warmer. I engage in digital trade so my physical presence is not necessary within Japan to handle things in Japan. The only constraint is I have not seen my Japanese boo in person although we video conference every other week and send each other photos. But I can easily bring her here to the United States and we can move to Los Angeles and start a new life – I want to launch my global empire first. So I don’t have that much skin in the game regarding Japan's current decision to maintain a travel ban. 

However, I’m concerned about other people being seriously impacted by this Japan LDP poorly thought-out travel ban on foreigners. You have college students who were studying the Japanese language and ready to go to school in Japan outright banned from attending and lost years of not attending school – many of them lost a lot of money and have to find a new direction in their lives altogether. You have people who have family and newly budding relationships physically cut off causing emotional distress and estranged relationships because of Japan's poor global leadership decisions. You have businesses that set up shop in Japan whose senior leadership cannot travel to Japan to connect with their employees within Japan, causing morale issues and lower productivity. 

Here is the problem – the average person who wants to study or move to Japan or deal with Japan is exceptional and has exceptional skills and talent. Japan has a points-based entry system just like every other nation seeking critical talent and skills so they already had a system in place to make sure they filter out the good necessary talent to contribute to their society was allowed in. But Japan now has an image they are bigoted, xenophobic, and isolationists by just applying a blanket ban and don’t appear to care who is hurt or impacted by this decision. 

Japan is not Australia or New Zealand or Israel who have blank travel bans – Japan is the 3rd largest economy in the world and you don’t be the 3rd largest economy without a heavy impact on global trade. Japan just turned off a lot of good talent, good students, good people with family members in Japan, and even further – people who had an affinity for Japan and Japanese culture and lifestyle. Japan basically told all this critical talent they have no worth to Japan and banned them all from progressing in their life. 

Notice as I have written the previous paragraphs, I have not even mentioned COVID-19 or Omicron because that is a fake issue. The majority of people who want to travel to Japan are intelligent and compliant and would likely be vaccinated twice with an additional booster. Japan can easily test antibodies to see if an arriving person has been protected from COVID-19, they are an advanced medical society. Japan long had technology that screens people from other infectious diseases like SARS (which is what COVID-19 is a variant of) so Japan's concerns about the COVID-19 and Omicron is just made-up nonsense at best. This move by Japan appears to be nothing more than xenophobia and bigoted. 

This is the problem that me and my team need to consider about Japan like everybody else who wants to do business in Japan. I have to worry about Japan's loss of credibility among global talent – who wants to move to Japan when Japan arbitrarily imposed these nonsensible travel bans on foreigners? Just leisurely decide to disrupt people's lives or leave them in a bad predicament. So it’s going to be next to impossible to bring credible global talent to join us in Japan if we settle in Japan and we going to have to shell out more money and provide insurance in case Japan does this xenophobic decision to just ban foreigners again. So now Japan made it more expensive to do business in Japan due to lack of credibility by this poor travel ban decision. 

Number two – we live in a cancel culture era and Japanese people and Japan is going to get blowback. No one in the LDP or in the Japanese government should have never believed they pull a move like this blanket travel ban and don’t think people will engage in revenge. Japan messed a lot of people's lives up and those people will strike back at Japan. People are going to talk bad about Japan, they going to say Japanese people hate outsiders and are bigoted people. People are going to advocate boycotting Japan and the next time Japan wants to do that “Cool Japan” stuff, people going to respond negatively against Japan citing the blanket travel ban. There is already anti-Japan organizing among the youth against Japan going on right now with people sharing their life disrupted stories due to this poor decision by the Japanese government. 

The fallout of this blanket travel ban in Japan is not going away and will have an impact for decades. People are going to start looking at South Korea, Singapore, or other alternative Asian nations to do business and Japan will not be top of mind. What is not being discussed is Japan is going through a population decline, aging citizens that will rely on government social services, labor talent shortage, and falling behind on innovation versus China and India rapid growth in the 21st century. This one decision, this blanket travel ban just sealed the fate of Japan with all of these other factors I just mentioned. Everybody will move faster than Japan while Japan falls behind and struggle for decades to come. 

With that said, our future-facing strategic planning has to evaluate if Japan is still a feasible or viable place to set up shop as a place to do business. I can tell you now, we not going to be able to set up crypto-operations in Japan if Japan just starts imposing blanket bans on global crypto-talent. That crypto-talent is going to choose to live in Puerto Rico and set up crypto-operations in El Salvador and Nicaragua and Argentina where the cost of living is cheap and the people in these countries have nice attitudes and nice bodies. I cannot sell Japan as a destination like I used to pre-2020 because that is going to be the first response and someone going to tell me I need to pay them more to take a risk with Japan. 

So, this situation with Japan is both messy and irreversible damage. Japan made a really horrible and unnecessary decision and this travel ban has made Japan look bad. Once you lose trust and respect, it’s hard to get it back, especially when people got better options like South Korea to choose from. I’m really shocked that the LDP made such as horrible xenophobic decision when they could have implemented their points system to allow only necessary talent into Japan and just excluded tourists and weebs. Now Japan has lost credibility and going to have smart global talent shunning Japan and talking bad about Japan for years to come. 

I’m confused why the Japanese government did not consider the long-term retaliation by the global citizen population for imposing this travel ban and harming people's lives through estrangement and disruption. This is one of the worst policy decisions I have personally seen in my lifetime and I have to decide how to move forward like everybody else around here. Japan needs to realize their survival and viability are at stake and apologize for those global citizen lives they disrupted and even provide reparations to get their reputation back. If not, Japan's future will be nothing but a global decline in power with hostile neighbors like China, Russia, and North Korea and a declining population and no longer liked by Americans because Americans will remember they were banned from entry. 

Our future decision on Japan is to observe how Japan correct this poor decision – if Kishida and the LDP try to save face and maintain some false nationalistic pride to justify this blanket travel ban, then I know Japan is screwed and going down in power and influence among global citizens and global talent, plain and simple. If Kishisa and the LDP put in genuine recognition of the damage that was done to the students and global talent and international businesses and make amends, apologize and institute reparations, then Japan will be back on track to recovery. So this is all on Japan and I’m waiting and seeing until the end of April what Japan is going to decide to do.