Anna Matsushita

 March came. The number of COVID-19 patients now seemed to be under control. Somehow, people seemed to have got used to the situation. One of the thing I noticed during COVID days is that we were not good at keeping social distance. The queue at the supermarket and train station were always packed, not many people seemed to be aware of the rule to keep distance anymore. I reckon it is partly because there is no penalty for rule breaking.  It was difficult to keep distance from the crowd, but you need to go shopping for grocery and take public transport to go to job centre. The number of COVID-19 patients was at one of the lowest in March 2021, with daily about 1,000 patients throughout Japan. Vaccine was gradually on roll out, and essential workers began taking vaccines. All we needed was a blue print when those who are not essential workers can get the jabs. I felt a luck of festivity in this season. We do have celebration of “Doll’s day”, when families with little girls ...

  Spring in Japan comes quite sudden. From chilly and gloomy grey winter, the season suddenly changes with many flowers blooming day by day. I have been mostly living in Kanagawa Japan and been through the change of season many times, but the sign of spring time is always delights to my eyes. During COVID-19 season, it was nice to see these flowers, to keep your attention away from the depressing news for a while. First flower which brings spring to my neighbourhood is Ume blossoms (Prunus mume, type of apricot) on trees.  The blossoms are fragrant, with sweet and fresh that you can notice while walking pass a tree. The blossoms are mostly white and pink. The fruit of Prunus mume is edible, mostly salted to make Umeboshi or cooked with sugar for jam. The second flower that shows up in my neighbourhood is narcissus. They grow in tine woods underneath the trees. We grow yellow narcissus at home as well. They do tell a change of season, telling that the cold weather will soon be ...

One afternoon in February, I met one of my friend in Yokohama for a lunch. It was just the day after I turned down a job offer from an organization in Tokyo. I initially informed my friend a good new of being offered a position. However, my instinct told me not to take that offer, as the people I met at the interview seemed so unhappy, frightened, hollow and lethargic. I know that I should take any chance, but meeting these people simply put me off and I wasn’t excited to receive the job offer at all. I met my friend at a restaurant and informed my decision. He has been helping me through the past months, introducing to various job agents and giving me plenty of advice when changing job. He is a cheery chap who is quite talented manager in banking and insurance field with lots of experience. I wanted to meet him, to get better influence from a successful person. Furthermore, I wanted to catch up with him as we haven’t met about 5 years or so. He suggested to meet at a restaurant which ...

  The state of emergency continued on in Kanto area, Japan. I carried on with my job hunt since I left the travel company in September 2019, due to the outbreak of COVID-19. The winter in Japan is quite cold and gloomy. Since the outbreak of COVID, I reckon many people missed chance to re-unite with their friends and family and longed for the reconnection with them and have some fun together. During a quite frustrating day sending out my resumes to companies, an idea hit me. To organize a book club online. I did this during Christmas period, and many people joined. It was fun to connect with people who only meet on social media, but they posted many photographs of the books they have read. I took the opportunity to organize a reading event, this time the theme was Valentine’s day. I was thinking of reading books of love – whether it is romantic love or love of family, or unconditional towards things you love. Some people showed interest. However, one thing that I found was that the...

  “ Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes ! “ That is how the opening song of the musical “RENT” goes. 1 year counted in minutes. How have we lived those minutes in 2020 ? In my case, I have never applied for a job vacancy and sent out so many resumes in my life. I practically researched companies every day and wrote why I was interested in their business and the open positions. I think I spent my two hundred and twenty thousand minutes writing resumes and researching companies and applying for job vacancies. Some people told me that a famous astronaut had sent out 1,000 resumes to get a job after his or her flight to the space, and I should follow his/her example. I duly noted the wisdom. Job market in Japan was quite slow from the end of 2020 to the beginning of January 2021. Still, luckily, there were some openings so I could at least try for my chances on them. Looking around, so much seem to have changed and we needed to adopt to so-called “New normal”. Whether...

  The second state of emergency was declared in Japan at the beginning of January 2021. The number of COVID-19 patient was increasing at alarmingly high pace. This time hospitals were all prepared, so there were at least some beds for new patients contracted to the virus. It was distressing to watch the evening TV news programme to see the number of patients rising day by day, but that was our reality. I think it was almost the same situation across the world. Many businesses, especially food industries such as bars and restaurants were badly hit, requested to close early. One of my old friend who runs Yakitori and wine restaurant was hit hard. His restaurant in Tokyo serves good wines made in many parts of Japan, and wonderful yakitori (skewered roasted chicken). I used to go there with my friends and colleagues, chatted over wonderful glasses of beer and wine with delicious yakitoris and other dishes. His restaurant normally close at around 24:00, but  he needed to close at ...

  The year 2020 ended with our usual winter cleaning. Yes, we somehow don’t do Spring cleaning. Every end of year, most of Japanese people do cleaning their houses, throw away rubbish, scrub floor and wipe windows, clear up refrigerator and put all the nice things for the New Year feast. The reason why people clean up their houses at the end of year is probably because of the weather, also probably because of an ancient custom. The weather in December is normally good, the air is quite dry. It is one of the best time to do all the washing and cleaning while the weather is good. It is easy to dust, scrub and wipe all the dirt which has been left untouched quite a while. In 2020, my father and I were in charge of wiping the windows – it was quite nice to see the clean windows shining under the sun, after wiping and scrubbing them with rag, sometimes with old newspapers soaked in water. The ancient custom side possibly relates to Shinto. This is how I learned during my childhood, so t...

  Another Christmas came in 2020. At home, we were grateful more than ever that we could celebrate the day being healthy and warm under our roof. As Christmas approached, I reflected the year 2019 during Christmas period. It was one of the quiet season for travel industry, except that we had many Christmas tours from Japan to Europe, to enjoy visiting Christmas markets and see illuminations. One of the popular destination is Germany, where you can enjoy various Christmas markets. I was working on a tour which visits Nuremberg, Stuttgart, and Rothenburg. The tour itself is not extremely difficult one, but the preparation itself was a great fun. I prepared how to exchange a voucher at Christmas market reception for a drink ticket, where the group can get a mug for Glühwein for each. Thinking that the group will enjoy visiting Christmas market with many stalls selling Christmas food and decorations, and enjoying in warm atmosphere, is one of the great thing working at tour operator. T...