Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is arriving in Japan on Tuesday for talks with his counterpart Motegi Toshimitsu. He is also expected to meet Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide the following day.
This will be the first time since the launch of Suga's Cabinet that a high-ranking official from China is coming to Japan.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is to arrive in Japan on Tuesday for talks with his counterpart Motegi Toshimitsu. He is also expected to meet Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide the following day.
This will be the first time since the launch of Suga's Cabinet that a high-ranking official from China has come to Japan.
NHK has learned that a senior Japanese foreign ministry official will visit South Korea from Wednesday, apparently to seek a breakthrough to improve bilateral ties.
Takizaki Shigeki, the director-general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau will stay in South Korea for three days.
The Japan National Tourism Organization estimates that 13,700 foreigners entered Japan in September. The figure exceeded 10,000 for the first time in six months, but is down 99.4 percent from a year ago.
They mostly came from Asia, with 3,000 from China, 2,700 from Vietnam, 1,400 from South Korea and 1,000 from Thailand. Most of them are thought to be foreign students and technical trainees who had been living in Japan before the coronavirus outbreak and reentered the country.
Foreign ministers from Japan, the United States, Australia and India have held a meeting in Tokyo to discuss ways to realize a free and open Indo-Pacific region.
The four-party foreign ministerial meeting started on Tuesday evening. Japanese Foreign Minister Motegi Toshimitsu, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne and India's External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar were in attendance.
The Japanese government will allow the reentry of some foreign nationals with residence status, starting on August 5.
Japan currently denies entry of foreigners from 146 countries and regions as part of anti-coronavirus measures. Foreign residents are also barred from reentering Japan once they leave the country, unless there are special circumstances.
NHK has learned that the Japanese government plans to allow foreign nationals with certain residency statuses, including students and technical trainees, to re-enter the country despite a ban imposed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Those who temporarily left Japan before the restrictions were imposed will be eligible, on the condition they comply with requirements such as taking a PCR virus test.
The Japanese government opened a one-stop consultation center in Tokyo on Monday to provide assistance to foreign workers.
The Foreign Residents Support Center, or FRESC, is in Yotsuya, Shinjuku Ward. Eight government-affiliated organizations have offices there, including the Immigration Services Agency and the Japan Legal Support Center.
The Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force has confirmed that a foreign submarine navigated an area just outside Japan's territorial waters without surfacing this week. Defense officials say they believe the submarine belongs to the Chinese Navy.
Defense Ministry officials say MSDF destroyers and patrol planes first spotted the submarine on Thursday afternoon in the contiguous zone northeast of Amami-Oshima Island in Japan's southwestern prefecture of Kagoshima. They say it was moving west and that the MSDF kept it under observation.