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Last year, I spent an enormous amount on doctors. My chronic thyroid problem was the smallest issue, but the weekly rehabilitation for my hip added up quickly. Plus the broken tooth that had to be fixed with a crown, and altogether, I spend more than 160.000 yen on doctors and meds last year.

How come, you may ask. Is there no mandatory health insurance in Japan? Yes, there is, but even so, I have to pay 30% of any medicine and doctor’s visit myself. You can’t leave any clinic without paying the bill; but now that I write this, I’m wondering what happens if it’s an emergency or an accident and you don’t have any money on you… Well, nothing I’m keen to find out, to be honest.

In any case, getting seriously sick is quite expensive even in Japan. But there’s an upside to it too: If you spend more than 100.000 yen in a single year, you can get a small part of it reimbursed, 5% of any payments above that threshold, to be precise.

This year, with the reimbursement actually worth the hassle and paperwork, my accountant helped me apply for it and – I’ll get 4025 yen back! No, that won’t make me rich at all, but with my business still lying flat, every little bit helps. Although, to be honest, I would have preferred not to spend all that money on doctors in the first place…

Imagine there’s a lockdown – and nobody cares.

Kyoto has been on its second Covid19 lockdown since January 13 and will remain so until February 7, unless the infections keep occurring on the same level of course. And, given how things have changed from the first lockdown, I wouldn’t be suprised if we we’re supposed to stay at home for longer. And the reason is:

Nobody actually is at home, despite the lockdown. I had to go to Kyoto Station last Saturday, and yes, the city was much quieter than usual. Part of it was surely the rainy weather, and part of it is surely the complete lack of tourists, foreign and domestic. Still, all the surviving shops were open this time, neither the streets nor public transport are completely deserted and museums, shrines, and temples have shortened business hours at best. The only thing where you notice something unusual is that the streets get much more quiet from 7 pm because restaurants are closing early.

This is a far cry from the eerie emptiness Kyoto experienced last spring during the first lockdown. To be fair, since then, many measures have been adopted to keep people safe, like compulsory wearing of masks inside buildings, social distance enforced with markers on the floor and plastic dividers on tables, fewer seats in restaurants, bottles of disinfectant everywhere… It took time to implement these and since people mostly adhere to the rules, I can see that most of them feel safe. I for sure do.

But while I am happy that I can keep up most of my routine and go out, I do sometimes wonder about other people and their train of thought. Last week, when I was meeting one of my students, there was a group of elderly people that I had seen before. They meet and chat and generally have a good time. This time, they were sitting at the table next to ours. At first there were only two old guys, but then more and more people would come.

Since the table was small, once there were six people, they were beginning to encroach on our space. And that’s when I got really annoyed. These were all old people, 65+, eating, drinking, laughing as nothing was amiss, no social distancing (although they did wear masks). I get it: I didn’t like to be shut up at home all day either. But YOU old people are exactly the reason why we’re shutting half of the country down. I’m not the one who has a big risk of getting seriously sick, YOU are. You silly old people need to stay home and find another way for your group therapy sessions. It’s only for four weeks while we’re in lockdown, that can’t be that difficult?

In the end, my student and I changed tables and topics. But seriously, how can you tell young people to put their lives on hold so that old people don’t get sick when these same old people couldn’t care less about it? I feel this kind of respect and taking care of each other should go both ways. But if it’s not even working in Japan, I don’t see much light for the rest of the planet.

Welcome to 2021 which is still pretty much the same as 2020: With Japan being at the height of the third Covid19-wave, Kyoto and 10 other provinces have entered the second lockdown today. It will be in effect until February 7th, unless things are changing of course. Just like last year in April/May, restaurants, department stores, movie theaters etc. should close earlier, companies are encouraged to allow their workers to work from home, and people are asked to avoid going outside unnecessarily.

At least the last part shouldn’t be too difficult, as it is cold. Really cold. Not that this is unusual for this time of the year, but there is a certain edge to it at the moment. For example, last Friday, when I wanted to open the window in my bedroom, I couldn’t. Here’s why:

Can you see the ice that’s blocking the windows from moving? Whenever it gets cold in Kyoto, my single-glazed windows are fogging up over night, and it takes a while for all the dew to evaporate on the next day. On very cold days, I have had little ice streams flowing down the windows over night. However, this is the first time that a whole ice block has formed and froze my windows shut. It took one hour until I could open them again and remove the ice.

Two things are interesting about this: First, I told a friend of mine about this and she didn’t even bat an eye. So… is this normal around here? Or maybe she wasn’t impressed because the freezing cold had burst one of her water pipes that very same night and it took her several hours to get it fixed. Obviously, she had bigger fish to fry that day.

And second: even though it was so cold in the room that so large an amount of ice could form on my window, I slept like a baby and never woke up for a single minute. I am usually very sensitive to cold but I felt nothing that night. It seems that the heavy duvet filled with sheep’s wool I bought last autumn was an excellent investment!

Happy New Year again! I hope you had some nice holidays and some quiet time for yourself. I did, and it was wonderful! The construction, or rather: de-construction next door had their last day on December 30, as did the garbage facility, so I had 4 days of really quiet time. It seemed almost as if all of Kyoto had shut down, the mornings were so quiet and nothing stirred at all.

I didn’t dare going out at all though. The bell-ringing on New Year’s Eve was largely cancelled, but I could hear them clearly for an hour or so around midnight. Hatsumode also I postponed, just to be safe. It’s the year of the ox, so I would have to go to Kitano Tenmangu shrine, but this shrine is super busy to begin with, so I didn’t want to add to the crowds (which we are still supposed to avoid because Corona isn’t over).

Instead, I did a lot of reading over New Year’s. A friend of mine sent me a book with stories by Viennese authors as a Christmas gift, but I decided to read this one in style – and in a cafe and not at home (if you know Viennese “Kaffeehaeuser”, you’ll understand.) I borrowed books from the library, but the one I wanted, they had to get through inter-library loan from Kyushu, and I haven’t heard back from them yet.

So yes, I’m gearing back up again since Monday. I have a new client and work will start soon, possibly this week, and some of my previous work will continue on Friday, if everything turns out alright. After the garbage fire of 2020, I can only hope that this year will get much, much better. I do need it – but then again, I guess we all do.