Doubt that a Tokyo hotel will arrange a taxi for you for free. A normal taxi from narita airport will cost you in excess of rm 700 (no kidding). Japan has the most expensive taxi in the world by far. Metered taxis will cost u at least rm 15 per km. express train from narita to tokyo already costs rm 100 plus

If you look at the airline thematic visa database, Japanese visa is "strongly recommended' but not needed for malaysians. I actually entered Japan "without' a visa last Aug. I was taken into a room and asked to fill out a stack of forms titled "special enquiry". They gave me a 14 days permit after that.

Sadly It is a reflection of the sorry state of the Japanese economy. The tsunami is deterring visitors but they have a lot of serious underlying issues with their economy that is becoming more apparent nowadays. It has never recovered from the property bubble burst in the late 90's. Growth is almost stagnant after that. Most of the economic indicators for Asia nowadays are quoted "Asia ex Japan". The US has relaxed their visa policy even more. Approval rate before the Lehman collapse used to be around 50% but now it is more than 80% from what Ive heard. Previously you need 100k to qualify for their visa but even junior executives that are not sponsored by their company got it. Previously these people can forget about it. These people probably have 10k in their account at most.

That is very true during the heydays of the 90s. I am really sorry sir but the Japanese government debt is 200% of their GDP and it is one of the highest in the world, meaning that the money that they owe is twice the number of their economic output a year . The same figure for Italy is around 100% and investors are already knocking on their doors.

Their visa is so troublesome. They insisted that I produced a confirmed air ticket and confirmed hotel bookings as if they are going to refund me everything if the application is not sucessful. I insisted that I had none and they asked to write out everything in detail flight no time , hotel address, contact etc. I just took out my Iphone and find a few hotels from tripadvisor to put in.

I am actually in Osaka now. They gave me the visa in 2 days anyway though I have nothing confirmed

I took out and IPhone and write a few hotels and flights randomly from trip advisor in front of them. Hotels are ridiculously expensive now.

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Added on May 3, 2012, 12:48 pmETA is essentially visa free travel minus a background check. Not all nationals traveling to aus can it. Thais an Indonesians still have to go through the normal paper application process. Less than 10 countries in Asia are eligible. You are not asked to proof adequate funds and you are not going to be rejected unless you are some blacklist. The process is similar for nationals who can enter US without visa such as Singaporeans . They have to get a similar eta as well

This post has been edited by taxpayer: May 3 2012, 12:48 PM