I REALLY DID IT NOW.

2023/06/21 (Edited and additions on 2023/06/22)

Well, I have really done it now.   I steamed in to their harbor and set it alight with hotshot.  Now to await the results.  Well, not really “await” as it may communicate anxiety.  I am really disinterested in the results.  I gave both of my classes of 1st year medical students the full anti mask lesson, complete with video of someone trying on various masks and respirators in the figid cold so that we can see his breath

and a couple of former US Marines testing similar with bear spray.

They then received an explanation of the respirator certification course, how and why masks can not guard against viruses and finally, the fact that we have had 8 waves here with the last two at least, bigger than any that preceded them indicating that masks simply are not getting it done.  Then I moved on to the harms of mask misuse.

The students being masked themselves, it was impossible for me to gauge how they were taking this “new” information.  However, one’s eyes looked bemused, a couple appeared to be angry, another couple appeared shocked, most of the rest appeared bored.  One took on a near fetal position in her chair and grabber her head as if my words were inflicting pain.  She arrived late for class and may have had a hangover for all I know, though I doubt it.  At the conclusion of each class I stated that if there was ever a lesson that would get me fired, this was it.  At least one in each classes nodded emphatically in the affirmative.  We’ll see if I’m still employed for next week’s classes.

In other news and updates.  Monday of this week I was in the Hanzomon area of Tokyo.  While there, one or more nearby schools must have let out as suddenly there were school children everywhere, all masked.  I stopped at a Chinese restaurant for lunch but had difficulty ordering.  They only accept orders online.  The menu and ordering is accessible via a QR Code read with the customer’s idiot phone, which I do not have.  The flustered and of course masked waitress had to run down stairs to fetch an iPad for me to use.  The first in person lesson in 3 years and 4 months for what was once my main employer had me finishing late downtown so I ate dinner there before heading home.  They too had the QR Code ordering system.  Not long, I think, until we will need an expensive idiot phone with tracking built in to read QR Codes to do anything and everything.  The tech exists and is already in use.

After class today, I again walked to Shinjuku, two stops away from my Wednesday worksite.  It is warm today but the humidity is uncharacteristically low and we have a pleasant breeze.  Lovely outside but the train is miserably hot and humid, as almost always.  Whereas in the past few weeks I have been shocked at the number of closed businesses around the station, today I was struck dumb.  Not only are more, huge areas of the land fronting the station now vacant, the once extremely large main Odakyu Development Store building is being torn down.    Trip Advisor states that it is reportedly permanently closed on their website.  

This is what it used to look like. (Not my photo.)

My photo of how it looks now. Taken from a different angle.

Across from the Shinjuku Post Office was a small multi storied stationary and art supply store. It too is gone. Both it and the Odakyu Department store and I had histories together stretching back to the late 1990s when I was here as an exchange student. The main store of Sekaido remains in business but this smaller one was frequented much more be myself as it was down the street from where I worked and near the Post Office I used more often than others for most of my time in Japan.

Sekaido’s Shinjuku West now vacant location. (Photo by author.)

Talking with a coworker, he said that Odakyu will return once the new building was built, then he checked online and is not sure. The new building is planned to be finished in 2030, hard to believe that a department store can wait 7 years to resume business. While their much smaller secondary building is still open, years ago Bic Camera moved in and occupies 2 or more floors of it. Overall, it is a humongous reduction of floor space. Itoya, the stationary store, moved in a few years ago and was one of THEE places to go for anything one could think of being provided by such a store. They had a lovely rooftop garden where I spent many hours between classes drinking coffee and grading papers. Unbelievable that it too is gone.

Picked up an item that I used to be able to get for ¥500 but now costs over ¥1400.  But no worries, we are told inflation remains low in Japan.