Tokyo “New Normal” to June 30th

Notes, observations, and candid street shots from daily life around the Greater Tokyo Area in 2020: The Year of Coronavirus

‘The universe has provided you with a retreat that you might not have had any opportunity to do in your life in this way,’ and to use it somehow to deepen your compassion, your self-care, the wisdom you have.” — Jake Kornfield

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Diary Excerpts: Residents Returning…?; The Spanish Flu in Japan

3. Zenblog. Corona Edition: Tim Ferriss and Jack Kerouac

4. Pictures

5. Journal: Headlines; Stories That Caught My Eye; Social Media; Resources.

1. Introduction

Update #1 (July 1) Thanks to Giora at r/thorntree for pointing out Motoko Rich’s essay In Japan, the Message of Anti-Racism Protests Fails to Hit Home: A view that institutional racism is a faraway problem is keeping the country from more fully confronting entrenched discrimination. Although Rich doesn’t make the connection herself, I believe that the discriminatory ban on residents traveling abroad is an an example of inadvertent racism. As Rich writes,

The country’s insularity has generated not just overt and unconscious bias against people abroad, but also a distrust of foreigners who come to Japan.