so im heading to japan in about 6 weeks and obviously bringing the mavic air 2. ive been reading about the rules there and honestly its giving me a headache. from what i can tell you need to register the drone before you go, like on some government portal, and then theres all these no-fly zones around temples and parks and basically anywhere that looks cool to film. has anyone actually done this recently and can tell me what the process was like? also wondering if the registration i do at home counts or if i need to do something separate over there. dont want to show up and have the thing sitting in my bag the whole trip

yeah i did this last year, it was actually less painful than i expected. you register on the DIPS system ? just google it, the english version works fine. you submit your drone details and get a registration number that you're supposed to put on the drone physically. sticker or whatever. the main thing that caught me off guard was that most of the really scenic spots like Arashiyama bamboo grove and basically all of Kyoto city center are locked down hard. i ended up getting most of my shots out in the countryside near Nikko where it was way more relaxed. just download the DJI fly safe map and also cross reference with the MLIT drone map the japanese government runs, they dont always match exactly

not been to japan but flew in south korea last year which i think has similar headache levels lol. just make sure whatever app you use actually pulls current airspace data and not cached stuff, burned me once near seoul when i thought i was clear and definitely was not. good luck with the temples thing tho, heard its basically impossible to get a good shot of anything famous over there without some kind of permit