Work in Tokyo under Quarantine, COVID-19; 9th week (on May 30, 2020)

2020-05-30 2020-07-13

The state of emergency was withdrawn at the beginning of this week. People seems now to be struggling on gradual recover back to their usual life. Finally, we have some good news. Some public schools in Tokyo decided to reopen from June 1st.

Meanwhile, 22 new patients were confirmed in Tokyo yesterday. The number of new patients has been increasing slightly. Yet, nobody knows whether it is a sign of having the second peak or not.

Let me talk about my personal quarantine life this week. I received a notice from our company after the announcement of the withdrawing the state of emergency. This guideline says that employees should work from home unless special circumstances arise for a while.

It means that I probably don't go to our office for a few months after the announcement of the withdrawing the state of emergency has made. It was nothing surprising to me since it was as I expected. It also means that I probably don't go to our office for a few months, and my commuting pass becomes unnecessary. As I wrote before, mostly we use a prepaid e-card to commute to work or anywhere, the commuting pass like monthly one is also available in this format. It works well, but the problem is that my nearest station does not have any facility that I can refund or cancel this e-card. My current pass is for 6 months, which means longer I hold this card without refunding, more amount expires every day.

So I got on the train for the first time in almost two months in order to go to a commuter ticket office to cancel my pass. It was a very short trip and not crowded. All passengers were wearing masks without exception.
Somehow, I suddenly felt uneasiness there. What's wrong with me? I used to go to my office getting a crowded train every day just two months ago! Some people may feel sick more than I felt when they take a crowded train after everything back to normal, I think.