Life under a state of emergency in Tokyo.
As I start my second month of a very Japanese style Covid-19 lockdown in Tokyo, the sun is shining and the room temperature is over 28 degrees. The windows are open and there is a light breeze.
Just two weeks ago it was snowing outside!
Thankfully my company has decided, rightly, to close its doors while we are under a state of emergency and that now looks to be for at least another month so I have more time to push through my procrastination bug and start learning and creating more.
It seems that the government’s unenforced lockdown isn’t being respected by all companies though as my wife still needs to goto work about half time at the moment and I have heard on twitter of other eikaiwa (英会話 – English Conversational schools) still operating. Some pachinko parlors, the infamous smoke filled Japanese style casinos, remain open; attracting addicted gamblers from far and wide much to the dismay of local governors. One wonders if it’s enough to curb the spread of the virus here.
Thankfully, astonishingly, the number of infected in Japan remains somewhat stable and the daily average of new infections seems to be coming down. Hopefully this trend continues.
We are also supposed to get ￥100,000 each from the government at some point, when they can work out how to give it to us. Other, smaller, prefectures have already handed it out to some people however I will be surprised if Tokyo can manage to start handing it out this month.
Anyway, on a lighter note, I posted the beautiful sunset we had the other day to twitter:
I’m a real sucker for the golden hour, even if some(one) may call me a cliche photographer.
Here’s a couple bonus ones.
That’s it for this update.
Thanks for reading.
Andrew Meredith 