Week 40 - fine winter weather allows our Tokyo Two to remain out and about

 Edited BY


G P Kennedy


Ian & Minako – Tokyo



 Hello from a wet Tokyo, after a long period of dry, sunny weather it's raining all this weekend and there may even be some snow. 



 Can’t remember the last time we needed to carry an umbrella, love the winters here!



 The state of emergency will continue into February at least. 



 There doesn't appear to be much difference in day-to-day life but the number of new cases is dropping gradually. 



 It's still far from being a lockdown situation, people are in schools, restaurants, shops, galleries open. The commuter trains have about 10% fewer passengers but still crowded. 



 There should really be more people working from home but it's up to the companies to organize it and many seem reluctant to do anything.



 There has been a sharp rise in the number of ambulances turned away from hospitals because of lack of beds or staff or they’re not equipped to deal with COVID cases. Ambulance staff sometimes has to try several hospitals before being accepted.



 The government hopes to secure approval for the Pfizer vaccine by mid-February and has 310 million doses on order.







 Locally the restaurants continue to focus on takeaways as much as possible and close early as are shops and other public buildings.



Some trains are finishing earlier than previously.



 


Ian broke a tooth last weekend – biting on a homemade scone! We haven't been to the dentist for a year because of the pandemic but this had to be fixed. 



 Fortunately, although it was a Saturday we were able to get an appointment that day and a new tooth will be built into the existing root over several sessions. 



 As well as all the usual precautions that dentists take, she now wears at least 3 masks with extra layers in between and a full-face shield.






 We are taking long walks in our area such as Inokashira Park about 30 minutes walk away. 



 It's similar but bigger than our nearest park.



It has pretty much the same flora and fauna and has a boating lake, a small but colorful shrine, and even a zoo. 






It's in the big town of Kichijoji so is quite busy, nowhere near as quiet and laid-back as our area but still nice and we can pop into various shops as well.



 One day we had a delicious rice noodle and veg takeaway from a Taiwanese steam bun place in our town.



We ate it on a cold park bench before walking a few more kilometers. Great fun!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 44 - Mixed messages lead to protests in Turkey

Image
Edited BY G P Kennedy Gul- Aegean Coast, Turkey  The weather was icy cold last week, when I said I can’t take another day, suddenly that feeling of spring was in the air.   According to the Turkish folk calendar, the first Cemre - imagine a meteor fireball passing by up in the sky, warming the air - fell on Feb 19 and 20. There are two more yet to fall, one on Feb 26 and 27 and the last two in March – also will lead to the New Year Nevruz (Nowruz, Iranian).    They say the first Cemre always falls to the air, the second to the water, and the third to the earth.  Nowadays, because of warmer weather, we are able to have coffee in our garden with our neighbors and have a chat. Otherwise, we were overwhelmed with loneliness.  POLITICAL CRAZINESS  Our ordinary lives can be boring but daily politics is the opposite, there was a controversial event almost every day this week.   This country will make all of us mentally sick. It is ...
Read more

Week 49 - Simon says, 'Count your blessings my fellow Aussies'

Image
Edited BY G P Kennedy Simon - Perth, WA   Hi everyone, hope all is well wherever you are.  So here we are at the end of March in Western Australia, which means over 12 months of the Pandemic.   Across all of the country, the vaccines are being slowly rolled out but we are not hitting our intended targets.   This seems to be a combination of lack of supply and the doses being given by GP’s rather than at vaccination centers. I guess the only thing that stops this from being a real concern is the size of our case numbers.   The vast majority of our small number of cases is from returned overseas travelers who are put in quarantine anyway.   This week sees a small outbreak in Queensland with some community transmission. This has led to a snap three-day lockdown to try and contain it and perform contact tracing.  Going forward it looks like this will happen fairly frequently. We have demonstrated that these short and sharp lockdowns seem...
Read more

Week 15 - Wednesday in Milan explores the 'new normal' for Ellie

Image
Edited BY G P Kennedy Ellie - Milan, Italy    “How are y'all doing?” a friend from Texas asked me recently. I am happy to report that the contagion rate in Italy have been mostly down. Daily rates of new infections have been around 150 for the country.    I have the feeling, though, that this is due not only to scared people who mostly stick to their masks and distancing, but of the possibility to do things outdoors, which is what helps with holding new infections down. There are many unwelcome signs for change, though. For example, hope for getting rid of plastics, and its dispersal in the environment, is definitely given up.    Now that all coffee shops, company cafeterias and restaurants that hope to have clients indoors are required to outfit their spaces with distancing partitions, plastic has drastically increased. But it has also started causing some awkward moments.    I met with a friend for a coffee recently, our first get together after...
Read more