New Arrival Impressions: Omicron and a Beatles Bonenkai
New Arrival Impressions: Omicron Ethan Robinson and a Beatles Bonenkai
The view out of my hotel window looked out to an office building, where for two weeks I enjoyed a cut-out view of the daily life of a typical Tokyo salaryman. Every morning at 7:15 the doorbell to my room rang and there was a knock at my door. I brought in my bagged breakfast, and promptly at 7:30am, the lights came on in the office building, where workers ushered into the large open office spaces. The sun always set at 5:00pm, and all of the salary workers had mostly cleared out of the offices by 7:00, a few staying until as late as 9:30. It was easy to feel disassociated from the outside world, as each day Tokyo felt more like a set piece than reality, a city behind glass that I could see but not touch.
wake of the new omicron variant of COVID-19.
I’m sure the dozens of other quarantined JETs felt the same, and least to say, I was relieved to finally arrive in Akita. Exactly a week later, Japan’s borders were closed in the
A quick glance at the JET reddit page and you’ll see that many lost their jobs, their savings, or even their apartments after months of delays and scheduled arrivals being abruptly
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Those of us that arrived in November are incredibly lucky, as countless other JETs who were slated to arrive in December were left behind, some of whom have been waiting since Spring 2020. After nearly two years of waiting on borders to open and our arrival in Japan to even be remotely possible, the entry of omicron was a harsh reminder that our lives are totally at the mercy of a global pandemic. I am very conscious of my own luck and am blessed to be in Japan, having applied to the JET program after my graduation in December 2020. But countless other JETs are not so lucky.
