Anna Matsushita

  The third COVID state of emergency was lifted in the Kanto region of Japan at the end of March 2021. People gradually started to go out more often. On the surface level the life seemed to be returning to normal – except that people were wearing face masks even those without cedar pollen fever – allergy similar to hay fever. On a weekend, I visited Yokohama. Yokohama is located about 30 minutes from Tokyo by train. It is known as one of the oldest port towns which started trade with western countries, such as France, Britain and America about 200 years ago. It is pretty big city with many areas to visit, such as the three towers of King, Queen and Jack, Hikawa-Maru ocean liner, Minato-mirai area, China town, Yokohama English Rose garden and many more. The Yokohama station is one of the spots where you can see some iconic figures which represent Yokohama’s history. Once you are out of central ticket gates of JR or other private railways, you might notice very small trails of the hi...

  The State of Emergency was once again declared on 8th January until 7th February in Kanto region in Japan. Areas like Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba once again needed to follow the government’s request to restrict the unnecessary and non-urgent movement of people. This was later extended for one more month, until 21st March 2021. By then, I reckon that people were more used to the phrase “The State of Emergency”. People wore face masks all right, people worked from home, public transportations such as trains and buses were less crowded, schools had implemented online lessons, restaurants and bars were closed – I believe it was more or less the same situation across the world. However, people gradually changed their lifestyle. Many started to go to supermarkets for shopping taking entire family, including babies and small children. I recall that smaller children did not seems to take any precaution against Corona, with their bare faces and touching goods on supermarket shelves...

 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...