Anna Matsushita

  Our neighbour’s cat came to our garden for an afternoon nap. He has his favourite spot underneath the cherry tomato cage. The roses were in bloom and lavenders were budding. It was fine day, the weather was warm and dry, and everything seemed peaceful. I reflected the past 6 months. Since September 2020, I have been unemployed. The company I worked for needed to lay off 70% of workforce due to COVID19. Somehow, I managed to stay positive while unemployment, with occasional ups and downs. The main reason, I recall, was that I was with my family, also I was in touch with my friends and job advisors through SNS and e-mails. One of the person who supported me was a job counselor. I met my job counselor at his office in Yokohama. He was gentle and always helpful, suggested many job vacancies at stable businesses. My career at travel companies were not in the mainstream of their business. I was working on specialist’s visit abroad. The field of client’s fields were vast, from local or nati

  Self-isolation period continued on in May 2020. By that time, online meeting got ever popular. Every day I came across on the internet about Zoom and Teams meeting introduced at many companies across Japan. My friend suggested to have a small party using LINE. We missed our days chatting over glasses of beer at our favourite restaurants. Besides, we cancelled our end of year dinner, hanami party and so many occasion to drink on Sundays. On the day of my first LINE party, I was not able to access to video chat, and needed to rush to my PC to download the latest version of LINE application. Obviously my mobile phone was too old to download the latest application. I managed to download the app on my PC, and was happy to see my friends whom I haven’t met for a couple of month. We smugly held our favourite beers, and toasted for our health. After a while, another friend sent me a message on Messenger, and we decided to chat over video call on Messenger. We updated each other’s situation,