A major Buddhist temple in the city of Narita near Tokyo has been spruced up for the New Year.
About 40 monks and staff members wearing masks gathered in the main hall of Naritasan Shinshoji Temple shortly after 5:00 a.m. and began dusting Buddhist statues and altar ornaments with brushes and cloths.
NHK has learned that Japan's transport ministry and a railway operator have drawn up a proposal allowing people arriving from overseas to use the train to leave Narita Airport near Tokyo.
The government is currently asking arrivals from abroad to avoid using public transportation and instead arrange their own vehicles to leave the airport, even if they test negative for the coronavirus.
A PCR testing center has opened at Narita Airport near Tokyo for passengers who need proof of a negative coronavirus test result before traveling overseas.
The operator of Narita Airport says it's the first such on-the-spot facility at an airport in Japan.
Narita Airport near Tokyo is slashing landing fees as airlines struggle in the face of the coronavirus.
Narita International Airport Corporation says it is waiving landing charges for domestic passenger flights, and cutting fees for international journeys by about 30 percent.
Narita Airport near Tokyo has seen a drastic drop in the number of international flights due to the coronavirus pandemic. Airport officials say weekly flights are down nearly 85 percent year-on-year.
They say Narita had 3661 international arrivals and departures during the week ending January 25,which overlapped with the Lunar New Year holiday. The figure was the largest this year except for the new year holiday period.
The Japanese government has given the operator of Tokyo's Narita airport approval to build a third runway and extend one of the two existing ones.
The president of Narita International Airport Corporation, Akihiko Tamura, received the license for the project at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism on Friday.
Narita Airport east of Tokyo is crowded with tourists from China as the Lunar New Year holiday period gets underway.
Direct flights arrived from China one after another on Friday except from Wuhan, where outbound flights were grounded due to the spread of a new coronavirus almost across China.
Narita Airport outside Tokyo is tightening quarantine controls after Japanese health authorities confirmed the first case of infection of a new coronavirus linked to a pneumonia outbreak in China.
The new coronavirus was detected in a resident of Japan who had visited the Chinese city of Wuhan.