Work in Tokyo under Quarantine, COVID-19; 7th week (on May 16, 2020)

2020-05-16 2020-07-16

9 new patients were confirmed in Tokyo yesterday. At last, the number of patients decreased to a single digit. I was happy to hear that, but the state of emergency wasn't released in Tokyo. Saitama, Chiba, Kanagawa, Shimane, and Oita prefecture weren't released as well. The state of emergency of the rest of the prefecture was released or mitigated this week.

It's just my opinion, but I guess the state of emergency probably will be released in Tokyo next week. A long-established apparel company, Renown Inc., was announced its bankruptcy yesterday. It's the first bankruptcy of the popular company in Japan. Demands for restarting economic activity would increase more, triggering by this shocking news.

Let me talk about my personal quarantine life this week. I have been working from home in Tokyo under quarantine for seven weeks. Nowadays, I'm getting feel like that I don't want to go to my company's office anymore. One of the reasons is the train. I used to go to the office using that infamous packed trains during rush hour every day. I am more than just happy not to spend 1hour of my precious morning in that hell. Surely, there are not very enjoyable aspects of working from home. The Internet environment for video conferences isn't still stable and is very frustrating. But the network infrastructure will be strengthened easier in the future because there is much room for improvement compared to increasing number of trains to sort passenger volume, I think.

New world after COVID-19 will come inevitably but I'm afraid that many companies might back to the original style, -what we used to have before Corona-, for working. Which means, I will have to go work using the rush hour train every day, again.

Although the issue brought to the world by the COVID-19 made our life difficult with the threat of being contagious, we have learned and gotten many lessons and possible hits for living style including effective remote-work.

Unfortunately, Japanese people tend to stick with old habits, from my point of view. I hope that Japan will not be left behind in the world.