Here are a few stories from around Asia you may have missed this week.

The Chinese Embassy in South Korea said in a notice on Wednesday that China will resume the issuance of short-term visas to South Korean citizens visiting China for business, transit or general private affairs, on February 18.

The issuance of port visas and the 72/144-hour visa-free transit policy for South Korean citizens will also be resumed on the same day, China's National Immigration Administration later announced.

Japan saw nearly 1.5 million visitors in January as tourism recovered. This shows an accelerating recovery in tourism after the government scrapped COVID-19 curbs in October 2022. The number of foreign visitors for both business and leisure rose to 1,497,300 last month from 1,370,000 in December, the Japan National Tourism Organisation said in a release. More than a third of the arrivals were from South Korea. Arrivals were down 44 per cent from January 2019, before the pandemic hit.

The country is also aiming for a record number of foreign tourists in 2025.

The Japan Times reports that: "The ambitious goals come as the government expects a recovery in demand for international air travel and for upcoming international events to be held in Japan, such as the Expo 2025 in Osaka, to boost visitor numbers.”

Sri Lanka will ban single-use plastics, the government said on February 14, in a move that follows a series of wild elephant and deer deaths from plastic poisoning.

Cabinet spokesman and media minister Bandula Gunawardana said the manufacture or sale of plastic cutlery, cocktail shakers and artificial flowers will be prohibited from June. Imports of plastic cutlery, food wrappers and toys were banned two years ago, following a spate of deaths of elephants and deer on the island's northeast after foraging at open garbage dumps.

Autopsies showed the animals had died after eating plastics mixed with food waste.

The cost of onions - a mainstay in almost all Philippine dishes - shot up from around pesos 70 pesos ($1.28) a kilo in April to as much as 700 pesos in December, making them more expensive than meat. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has struggled to fulfill his campaign promises to bring down inflation, which hit 8.7% in January, driven by an 11.2% jump in food prices, the biggest since 2009. Acknowledging that part of the fault lay with poor planning, president Marcos has acted to speed up imports and prices have tumbled from December's highs, but rates in a Manila wet market are still around double the levels a year ago. Reuters reports that: "It is not just onions. Steep price rises for eggs and sugar have also whacked up the cost of putting food on the table.”

Due to import delays and damage to crops from bad weather, the price of a kilo of sugar has nearly doubled to 100 pesos from a year ago, while eggs, which cost six pesos a piece last year, are now selling at 10 pesos.