Unfortunately, citizens of the People's Republic of China and many other countries require a visa to visit Japan even for a few days.  The Japanese National Tourism Organization's web page on visa information gives useful information on who needs a visa to visit Japan.  If you are a paid registrant we can provide an invitation letter and other materials regarding the conference and the local host organization, the Japan Society for Bioinformatics, for you to submit to your local Japanese embassy/consulate to apply for a visa.  We can make no guarantee, but my understanding is that in general the process went smoothly for participants of GIW/ISCB-Asia 2014, also held in Tokyo.  We will try to coordinate with the registration system run by APBioNet to catch people registered from countries which require a visa, but we cannot guarantee we will be able to contact everyone. So if you need a visa, register, pay, then contact us at: giw-incob2015 *AT* jsbi.org.  To streamline the process; we will need to know your:

Also, if you plan to give a presentation or poster at GIW/InCoB 2015, please remind us of the title.

Finally, we apologize for the extra work it will take to get here if you need a visa, but we believe that the conference will be worth it!  Thank you in advance for your patience with the process.