I wanted to provide a short update this week on what's happening in Tokyo. It seems that many people have put in measures to dealing with the virus, but at the same time, there's some traditional aspects that are just too difficult to change. One such aspect is the working culture. A lot of people are dependent on the work as they are either scared to lose their income from bosses who may not be the most ethical, or their personal business will fail if they don't go into the office. It's been said that 60% of people still go to the office despite a state of emergency.
That said, everyday activities seem to have been modified. Most places that have cash registers have installed a clear plastic sheet to divide the staff and the customer. I've seen this in almost all convenience stores, groceries, and pharmacies. These workers are all wearing masks at all times. Many, but not all, wear gloves as well. It's gotten to the point where staff members at a grocery store where I live wear face shields meant for chemical laboratories.
When not manning a register, these staff can be seen wiping down counters, registers, and even shopping baskets with sanitized wet wipes. I've seen a few staff members wipe down display cases as well. These staff members clean for what looks like a significant amount of time as they have a lot of items to wipe down.
On the customer side, they've created stop lines in stores. The lines show the customer where to wait for their turn at the register, and it helps create distance between people. Almost all of the public wear masks now, so there's some comfort in there as well. People are shunned and treated passive-aggressively when they aren't in masks.
Yuriko Koike, the governor of Tokyo, is strongly advising people to stay at home. She has been listing companies and industries to the public in an effort to have less people out in the streets. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has also implemented two measures: one of sending two units of cloth masks to each household, and another is to provide 100,000 yen (about 1,000 CAD) to each person.
If I'm allowed to editorialize, this is all pretty stressful as a foreign person. I'm not the only one feeling the anxiety of how relatively lax everything is in Japan. The general public is wising up to the situation, but it's still nothing like a lockdown in other countries. The fact that Japan's government is insisting that the level of testing is appropriate doesn't do me any favours either, as they've only recently raised the cap of testing to about 20,000 nationally. It's a lot better than the 9,000 that was allotted before, but it's too little too late. The situation could be worse than it is on paper.
But hopefully, I'm just being paranoid.