Welcome to another edition of the Deskwarming Diaries, where an ALT wonders why she is still deskwarming even though the world is shutting down. This post sees some coronavirus updates, with a guest appearance from a stuffed hedgehog. Let’s jump in!
Today’s Lunch
Yum, first school lunch of the year.
- Milk
- Plain rice
- Sweet and sour pork and frozen tofu (豚肉と凍り豆腐の甘辛) — This dish in the top left is one of my favorites. The pork pieces are small enough you don’t usually get a lot of fat, the tofu is sweet and juicy, and there are also small pieces of potato in there as well.
- Tuna daikon salad (大根とツナのサラダ) — This dish, next to the sweet and sour pork, is also tasty. It has canned tuna, daikon radish, cucumbers, and carrots. It’s a little sour tasting, I think because of the radish.
- Miso-vegetable soup (みそけんちんじる) — Miso-vegetable chowder is what this dish actually translates into, but it doesn’t really look like a chowder so I’m calling it soup. It also had chunks of fatty pork in it (blech), so I’m not really sure why the lunch people called it what they did. It has pork, carrots, konyaku jelly, burdock root, potato, and tofu in it. Yum!
What’ve I been up to?
Today’s been fairly productive. I checked my e-mail, scanned the news, had an anxiety attack (a new thing that’s been happening regularly over the last couple of weeks) and planned a class I have for tomorrow. Yep, kids are back, even though the number of cases in Nagano are increasing (we’re up to 14 now). When I finished all that, I made a list and graph of all the cases we have so far using a list I found on the Nagano Prefecture website. You can see that document here.
Wait, schools are starting back???
Yep! We’re starting under the pretense that we will close again sometime in the future. Infections are projected to peak in Nagano around the end of May, but I’m hoping we’re able to close much sooner than that. In the meantime, the government has released ‘guidelines’ that we’re supposed to abide by. Included in these are the 3 C’s: Closed spaces with insufficient ventilation, Crowded conditions, and Close-range conversations. While it’s ok to have one of the three, we have to avoid overlapping any of them.
Don’t schools have all 3 C’s at once?
Ding ding ding, you are correct! To that end, my school, and many other schools, have put in place more guidelines to follow this year. These include:
- Students must sit with their desks in “test” formation (all facing forward with space between them)
- During lunch, students cannot move their desks to sit together. They must face forward and eat in silence.
- No singing is allowed outside of music class.
- No loud/raised voices.
- During cleaning time, door handles and commonly touched surfaces must be disinfected.
A major point of stress for me is trying to figure out how to have an elementary class when the kids can’t talk, sing, pass things around, or move from their desks. They can’t read or write really, and they’re too young to just give worksheets to and tell them to do them.
What’s the situation in Japan?
On a national level, Abe announced a state of emergency for several areas that currently are seeing large numbers of infections. This means that more power is given to local leaders to close businesses and schools and even commandeer space for more hospital beds. Here, ‘power’ means the ability to politely request that people stay at home… Yes, you read that right. Japan is so worried about infringing on peoples’ rights that the most they are willing to do at this point is request that people stay home.
In other news…
Hunter left yesterday. He made it to the airport and found out that his flight had been canceled, then luckily was able to book one through a different airline. A few hours after his plane took off, a friend sent me some info she’d just received, saying that Japan announced three days ago an automatic extension on tourist visas for three months, meaning that Hunter could’ve stayed. Not gonna lie, pretty angry and upset with myself for not seeing that info earlier. Trying to remember that it’s ok to make mistakes even though this one feels like a big one.
Hunter, of course, is a trooper. He took that news in stride and sent me funny pictures from the airport.
Until next time!
