Up on the mid-summer plateau, just a few hairs past the solstice in Olde Nagoyaland. Rainy season in these precincts,. too. Today is another mixed bag - hot and sultry until evening...then the piss down. Typically two or three days of that, until the sun makes another appearance for a day and a half, then more rain. Rinse and repeat. This will invariably wind down and give way to an obscene heat wave that will cook the shit out of us from the third week of July until the second week of August...around the cusp of Japanese Obon season, which, according to the old Japanese calendar, is the very beginning of autumn.
My late Gramma back in Canada used to say the same thing when I was growing up - that she could feel a 'change on the wind' from the second week of August - just a slight chill in the evening air - and that would signal the end of summer. I hated to hear that. I always loved summer, and just wanted it to go on and on. Mina told me to watch for the dragonflies in August; that they are always the harbingers of autumn in Japan. Down at the seaside, it's the appearance of little floaty 'wet tissue' looking jellyfish in the beach swimming areas that suggests the season is waning. Of course, the hot, humid weather goes on until early October, anyways.
No typhoons to speak of so far. Touch wood. No early cicadas yet, either. I expect them to start chiming in any day now.
Normally around this time we'd be gearing up to split the deadbeat scene here in Olde Nagoyaland for our annual truncated tropical island escape. Four glorious days of hemorrhaging cash in the nether regions of Okinawa prefecture, praying that we don't get washed out in monsoon rains or taken down by salmonella. Of course, there's also the requisite drama with whatever the year's hotel accommodations end up being, the aggressively mediocre food, and typically surly 'local hospitality'...but the beaches are absolutely gorgeous (assuming they aren't roped off ), and that's essentially the big draw. An annual, albeit all too brief frolic in the waves.
Last year we very nearly had to write it all off, as things for poor, dear Mina were not looking good at all. Around the third week of June she came down with a mysterious virus. High fever, chills, fatigue...the works. She tested negative for influenza, but ran a dangerously high temperature (38-39 C) for almost a week straight. Was basically knocked out on a cot in the tatami mat room for five or six days...listless, barely eating or even speaking. Pale as a ghost. It was scary. In almost 14 years, I'd never seen her like that. She had tests done. The infection had a lot of the same indications as cytomegalovirus, except... it couldn't be identified. To this day, it remains an enigma. Antibiotics just seemed to make it worse, of course. They love to throw antibiotics at everything over here; but even a lunk head like me knows that they are useless (and even occasionally hazardous) when chucked at a random viral infection. So we just had to wait it out. Almost a week in, her fever finally started to break. What a relief. Through all of this, we really had no idea what to do. It's a totally helpless feeling. Fortunately, I somehow remained unaffected. Both of us down would have been a disaster. Not so much as a sniffle or sneeze. Very strange. Perhaps I had antibodies? We'll never know.
She gradually started feeling better (returning to work the first week of July); though she wasn't really 100% back to normal, she insisted that she felt well enough to push ahead with the original plan...so on July 12th, off we went.*
*for all the juicy details on that sojourn, swing on over to the 2019 autumn equinox blog
Fast forward to solstice 2020. Needless to say, this year has turned out to be a bit of an unexpected abomination. We had tried to get our summer travel plans sorted a bit earlier than usual this year, and by mid-February, had everything booked, so we could put in even earlier scheduling notices/requests at our respective places of employment. In my case, it seems that no matter how early I get my meager annual scheduling requests in, the 'venerable' Mr. Insecthead and his minions totally botch them - to the point now that it seems almost deliberate. In a further attempt to avoid any of the drama that has erupted around this seemingly simple endeavour the last two years running, this time I decided to get Mina to write out a formal request (in Japanese, of course) so I could present it to bug-man in person, thus ensuring that he actually got, read and understood it. It's like at age 53, I'm suddenly in elementary school again, giving the teacher 'absence' notes from my mother. it's beyond ridiculous. Four and a half months in advance this time. Written in Japanese, by a native. Nothing left to chance. I was determined that there would be no room for dithering, shifty excuses, gaslighting or tooth sucking this year.
Upon peeling it open and reading it, his insectoid response?
"I don't know"
Jesus Christ. What's not to KNOW? it's one frigging day. The schedule for July isn't even close to being made yet. It won't be made for months.
"I don't know"
This seems to be Mr. Insecthead's pattern the last few years. It was never like this before. Nearly a quarter century in at this job, and every year I get treated more and more like either a problematic Chinese puzzle, or a massive infected thorn in their arses. Ten or fifteen years ago, I could simply make a scheduling request a month in advance, face to face, in plain English...and it would be done. No fancy notes in Japanese. No stressing out a full season in advance. Easy.
For the sake of added clarity, I decided to rephrase the 'request'...
"In other words, I won't be here on Tuesday July 2nd".
To which I got a cocked conical head, and quizzical, almost blank, insectoid stare. I half expected him to start rubbing his knees together and emitting a rapid, high pitched clicking noise.
A normal employer might say something friendly. Make small talk...along the lines of,
"Nice. Where are you planning on going this year?"
Nothing. Just the awkward, uneasy feeling one would get in the presence of a Praying Mantis the size of an adult Japanese male. I'm starting to feel more and more like Charlton Heston's Taylor in Planet of the Apes.
Anyways, mission accomplished. As far as I was concerned, he could go ahead and botch it up again, and I simply wouldn't be in on that day. Four and a half months constitutes fair warning. The rest of it is a massive waste of energy. Everything was looking good, and set to go.
Then - as if on cue - this virus business really started kicking in. Big time.
In late January, it was all the news from China, with their Chinese New Year's things being cancelled, and everyone being locked down. People over here looked at it like it was 'a Chinese problem'. You know, '...that's what they get for eating bats', and so-on. Things you see on TV, and think 'Wow. Glad I'm not THERE'.
Then it started hitting closer to home with the early February Princess Cruise ship debacle at Yokohama Port. The wolf was right at the door, on live TV, and the Japanese government was bungling every aspect of the rapidly unfolding dilemma. Finally, after weeks of actually exacerbating the situation for everyone involved, the 'men in suits' determined that they were just going to let a load of untested, incubating and infected people off the boat to go catch taxis and trains, eat kaiten sushi, and carry the virus home to every far flung corner of the country...spreading it around at every stop along the way, of course.
Then, by Valentine's Day, the first reports of cases here in Japan...particularly the local Renaissance Sports Club cluster right up the road from us here in Losersville. The shit show was really just starting. Our neighbourhood was shaping up to be one of the country's first real viral hot spots, as well.
That was mid-February. The rest is well documented recent history, of course. By early April we started doubting that the situation would improve enough to make going ahead and taking our trip anything but a dangerously bad idea, fraught with stress and anxiety...but we still had time to bide before our penalty-free early June cancellation deadline. So...bide the time we did. I think it was just after the Golden Week 'State of Emergency' lockdown (around the second week of May) that we finally decided to cave and pull the plug on it. Sure...we could have rolled the dice and taken our chances. Maybe if we were 20 years younger we would have.
Oh well.
We can take some small comfort in the fact that we're not the only ones forgoing trips this year. First world problems. At least neither of us is plugged into a ventilator, gasping for air. Or dead.
Interesting post text. After almost three months of being effectively moth-balled by Mr. Insecthead, I received an email and tentative, 'provisional' schedule for June, July and August. Shock of all shocks - it seems that his minions didn't schedule me on the single day in early July that I requested 'off'' three and a half months earlier. Maybe the note in 'native Japanese' tipped the scales? Hard to say.
Pity we won't actually be going anywhere. I won't bother saying anything.
Fast forward to the present.
It's been a bit over a month since the general 'State of Emergency' was lifted, and shops started raising their shutters. People are out and about, most masked up, others simply not - and flaunting it. Common sense seems to be in short supply, as usual. The recommendation to wear a mask doesn't imply that said mask needs to be worn in every situation. Driving one's car alone, or with family members? I'd say that the mask is pointless...yet it seems that 70% of the people I see driving around alone - or with family members - are masked up. People out walking, cycling or jogging...probably a good idea to peel off the mask and get some fresh air...yet it seems that at least half of the aforementioned are soldiering on, fully masked. Wearing a sweaty cesspool of recycled bacteria on your face all day long is not a good idea. Heading into a shop or station? Boarding a train? Dealing with people face to face in a close quarters situation? Mask up. You'd think the choices would be fairly easy and obvious. Nope.
My 'go-to' solution is to just stay away from everyone. Mask up when I need to go probing into a crowd, and spend as little time in those types of situations as possible. In other words, carry on pretty much as I always have.
As of last Friday, more of the government's nearly eight week old 'requests' to refrain from traveling within the country (or outside of our respective prefectural cubicles) have been lifted.
Bullet trains are filling up again.
People are clamouring to board domestic flights.
Kids are back in school.
Face coverings and hand cleaner have finally returned to store shelves (toilet paper hasn't been an issue for months).
Restaurants and bars are also seeing more customers. Despite all of this, and the appearance of 'relative' normalcy returning... things are still pretty fucking far from normal.
According to government media-minder vetted TV news reports, it seems that by some miracle, the recent 'local curve' of infections has now been flattened to only a handful of cases a week here in Deadbeat City - the most recent of those being attributed to a specific 'family group', consisting of a member (or members?) who recently returned from abroad...Pakistan, I believe they said.
Blame 'the foreigners' of course.
How anyone actually managed to get in (from Pakistan, of all places) is a bit of a mystery, since an entry ban has been placed on anyone coming from a list of 110 countries...with the exception of returning Japanese nationals, who are allowed to come back without question, but are required to quarantine for two weeks upon re-entry.
No one else is allowed in.
That includes permanent residents, spouses, and legitimate work or student visa holders. No exceptions. If they hadn't managed to get word that the border was being sealed in April and make it back in time, they're simply out of luck. It seems the government pulled a 'last minute Louie', and gave all the non-Japanese residents and visa holders who happened to be abroad less than a week's notice to drop everything and get their arses back, and into quarantine. If they were otherwise occupied, and didn't happen to be paying attention to the Japanese government's bulletins, they are, for the foreseeable future, in effect, locked out.
Sound fair?
For all the world it seems like the message here is that returning Japanese are permissible because they're CLEAN...unlike foreigners, who are likely to spread disease. This is nothing new. 'Racist' Japanese media pundits have been spreading 'nonsense' like this forever.
"Why is the infection and mortality rate so high in foreign countries, but not Japan?"
"Oh, we Japanese have a tradition of washing our hands, and taking off our shoes before entering our homes. Foreigners lick their hands to clean them, and wear shoes in their homes as if it were the street"
"We Japanese wear masks, and bow instead of shaking hands. Foreigners love to breathe on and touch everything and everyone"
"We Japanese eat healthy foods like raw fish, rice and miso soup. Foreigners eat hamburgers all the time, and are obese"
"We Japanese bathe every day, and change our underwear regularly. Foreigners have quick showers every few days, and wear the same clothes for a week" ...etc.
"We Japanese..."
That's not exclusionary at all, is it?
For now, the gates are closed to yonder barbarian hordes. Not exactly fair for the residents and visa holders, but as far as the gaggles of lookey-loos and curiousity seeking touristas, I'm of the opinion that they would be foolish not to keep the gates sealed tight until there's either a vaccine, or the virus burns itself out. I hate the fuckers. Due to all of the increased domestic travel, I'm fully expecting to see a spike in the local infection curve by the end of this month. Our only short-term 'hold-out' hope is that the extreme heat and humidity of Japanese summer somehow slows the virus down, or that the viral load of future infections will start incrementally decreasing...though such an expectation could be considered premature. The heat and humidity in other locales doesn't seem to be doing much to hinder the spread of this latter day plague. Not much hope for any kind of imminent vaccine, either. If it happens, it'll likely be later rather than sooner.
At the point things do look 'safe', we're thinking that it might be a good idea to get out and about before the shit-eating gaggles of idiot foreign sightseers inevitably return. Mina and I have started to make a tentative list of places that we'd like to revisit in their 'natural state', before they're spoiled again. The last time we were in Kyoto it was an absolute nightmare. So disappointing. It'd be nice to walk that town again, unmolested by selfie snapping international idiots. We booked a hotel room in Nagahama for Obon, just in case it's safe to go and do the family memorial service business with the buddhist priest at her Mum's house. If things go south (which I half expect), we'll just have to cancel. It would be nice to get out of Deadbeat City for a brief spell, if possible. Fingers crossed...expectations low.
Who knows what the summer will bring, though? By this time next month, everything could be locked down again. We can dream, anyways.
"Dreaming is free", as the pretty lady sang all those years ago.
Looking back on the spring lockdown (or for us Planet Japan dwellers, 'stay home requests'), work cancellations/furloughs, and ghost-town like urban-landscapes, I can't say I've hated it. If anything, it all kind of ruled.
Sure, I miss going out to the odd restaurant. Cooking almost every night is getting old.
I miss the cinema, too. Of course, there's streaming, and I have a shitload of movies over here; but I love going to the theatre. Have done since I was a kid. I miss it.
Live music? Not many bands or artists actually worth the time and money make it through these precincts of late, anyways. The local live house scene is total crap. You couldn't even pay me to subject myself to that. So...it's all good.
Social distancing? Best thing ever.
Self-isolating? Welcome to my world.
I don't actually have an abundance of friends in this shit-heel town, so that's not really an issue. No temptations to go out, breathe in second hand smoke, and have covid spittle sprayed in my face over beers... or be hooked into some kind of pathetic Brady Bunch/Hollywood Squares- style online conference drinking party.
I'm thankful for my lovely wife Minako...and feel blessed that we get on, and enjoy each other's company. At least, she seems tolerant of my quirks and bullshit. Were it anyone else, things might be a lot more challenging.
Which brings us to the local gallery section of this here seasonal ramble. Images and incidents, fleeting and random as they may be, that sear themselves into the mind's eye, and form a sort of pop-up book mark for this particular season...this 'fork' in life's twisting, turning road.
The first one that comes to mind is an incident out at Sappore, the specialty supermarket a couple of km up the road from us. I think it was at the height of Golden Week, during the so-called 'lockdown'. Anyways, the town was full of roaming idiots, all at loose ends because they couldn't travel to their hometowns, and were furloughed from their jobs. Supermarkets and home centers kind of became hot spots for people to go, because there was essentially nothing else to do. So, Mina and I are in there, masked up, attempting to social distance (next to impossible), doing our shopping, and trying to figure out what to get for dinner. We were in the deli/ bento section. This place is actually pretty good, and puts together some premium stuff. So we're looking over the selection, and out comes a trolley, and the guy unloads a half dozen cut steak bento boxes. Japanese beef. These are good. We move into position, and suddenly this sort of frenzy starts. Anyone who's seen sharks move in on a beef carcass dangling from a hook under a boat will know exactly what I'm talking about. The boxes started disappearing right under our noses. Obasans ( older middle-aged women) started darting in, grabbing and snatching, and darting out. Deadly accuracy. They're fucking pros. My wife secured one box, and I got my hands on the very last one at the corner of the counter, but it wasn't moving. No sooner had I touched it, than some masked, bucket-hatted obasan came out of nowhere and got her claws into the opposite corner. I pulled. She pulled. Surely, this wasn't actually happening...but it was. It was on. I wasn't letting go. She wasn't either. Mina was dumbfounded. I dug in. I wasn't letting the old cunt get it. I was there first. She was in it to win, apparently. That I'm a big imposing gaijin didn't faze her in the least. My heart is racing. Should I step on her foot? She's not letting go. Somehow, I finally managed to get the upper hand and yank it free, but not without seriously mangling the side of the box. I'm guessing some condensation from inside the lip of the bento lid caused her grip to loosen. Fortunately the contents were intact. Victory! Just like a frenzying shark, without flinching, she flicks her tail and moves back into the shadows, without her prize. No emotion. Just the cold focus of a born predator, ready swing back toward the table and try again. Thirty seconds later she was back cruising the opposite end of the counter, totally devoid of emotion. Mina shook her head, dumbfounded.
"Unbelievable".
That night, on steak we dined.
Finally, a couple of weeks ago I'm out on my daily run, plying the west Horikawa canal side. It's hot, and sweat is burning my eyes. Maybe around 30C at 11:00 am that day. Anyways, this particular stretch is straight asphalt...the canal on the right side, and some kind of seafood processing plant on the left. At least that's what I figure it is from the smell coming out of the place. There's no sidewalk, or centre line on the road, and cars and trucks are regularly moving in and out. I always run the length of the facility going north on the right (canal) side, up to the narrow bridge at the end, hook right, cross the bridge, then hook right again and run south down the opposite side of the canal to the ancient Dampusan burial mound. So, I'm about halfway up to the bridge, and for some reason, I decide to look down...and BAM! There's this waffled tabby cat, and I just missed stepping on it. My heart jumped into my throat. I guess a truck hit it mid-section, and it looked like it had been there drying up for a day or two. Its forepaws were outstretched, eyes were bugging out, and its mouth was wide open like it was yawning or screaming. It was like it looked right at me. The rest of it was a waffle of fur and bones and guts. It was really upsetting. I avoided that stretch of my run for the next week. Went back last Friday, and ran north on the seafood processing plant side. It seems someone cleared it up. That image is seared into my mind forever, though. Thanks a lot you fucking careless idiot truck driver.
A truly unlucky cat.
The stuff of nightmares, for sure.
And just like that, we're done for another season. Whoever and wherever you are, here's hoping you and yours stay safe and have a good summer. Keep it simple. Stay local. Don't let go of that prize bento, and be a little quicker on your mark than poor old Horikawa waffle cat. Oh, and do remember - - "no matter where you go...there you are". There and nowhere else in particular.
