timelets | Entries tagged with japan

Turtleneck sweaters are all the rage at Tokyo metropolitan government offices after Governor Yuriko Koike urged residents to wear them to stay warm and reduce energy consumption this winter.

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The sweater campaign will continue through the end of March.

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14808276

Japan will allow a limited number of barbarians to visit the islands under strict supervision:

Foreign tourists visiting Japan will be required to wear masks, take out private medical insurance and be chaperoned throughout their stay, the government said on Tuesday, as it plans a gradual opening from two years of COVID-19 restrictions.

Only visitors on package tours will be allowed in during the first phase of reopening, from June 10, the Japan Tourism Agency (JTA) said, adding that travel agency guides accompanying visitors will have to ensure they wear their masks.

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14639542

This study is a great candidate for this year's IgNobel in biology:

Japanese commonly describe a person frozen with fear as looking like “a frog scared stiff by a snake.”

A team of scientists from Kyoto University tested the notion that frogs freeze in place when faced with a snake by staging experiments that pitted the arch enemies against each other.

They found that frogs intentionally stay still at the sight of snakes as a means of escape.

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13263159

With fewer customers visiting its hair-care shops amid the pandemic, the company has been remodeling them into parlors specializing in eyebrows. As of the end of December, the company was operating 45 outlets nationwide with a total of 69 booths.

About 80 percent of customers are women in their 20s and 30s. Reservations for some outlets in the Tokyo metropolitan area are fully booked one month in advance, it said.
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Sixty percent of all respondents, including more than 70 percent of females, said they want to wear masks on a regular or occasional basis even after the pandemic settles down.

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14524091

Tokyo confirmed 20 fresh cases of COVID-19 on Dec. 17, five fewer than the same day a week ago.

The seven-day average of new cases over the week through Dec. 17 came to 20.4, or 111.5 percent of the figure for the previous week, metropolitan health officials said.

Three patients were listed in serious condition and required special breathing equipment. The number was unchanged from the previous day.

No related deaths were reported.

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14504630

No deaths in a city of 14 million at the time of a pandemic. And we still debate whether to get vaccinated or wear a mask. Unbelievable.

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14502710

This is really clever:

CO2, a substance found in the breath in large amounts, spreads easily in the atmosphere, so changes in the CO2 concentration are a useful indicator to identify how closed and crowded the space is.

For that reason, the Japan Society for Occupational Health states the CO2 level of 1,000 ppm or lower suggests the room is well ventilated based on the building hygiene control law and other criteria.

Under its recommendation, a room with a reading of higher than 3,500 ppm has an extremely bad ventilation capability, so the facility should not be used as a countermeasure against the novel coronavirus.
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The measured CO2 concentration is combined with data on the population density and degree of noise, allowing whether the space boasts the three-Cs settings to be determined.

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13832094

During the epidemic, Japanese robot cheerleaders are uniquely funny and sad at the same time.

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13543951

The Japanese can solve the COVID-19 problem

“I often got phone calls from (people) in other countries asking, ‘Do you guys have your own special medicine or something?’” Aso said at an Upper House finance committee meeting on June 4.

“I told these people, ‘Between your country and our country, mindo (the level of people) is different.’ And that made them speechless and quiet. Every time,” Aso boasted.

Mindo is a word often used by politicians and others to invoke Japanese nationalism and ethnic superiority and can refer to things like culture and social manners.
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“We have kept the fatality rate very low, and it was done just by asking people to (minimize their infection risk). People in other countries can’t do that, even being forced,” he said.

“I guess everybody (in Japan) just took it and sweated it out. There were no fines, no violations,” he said. “I believe the Japanese should be more proud about that.”

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13432875

but they can't solve the fertility problem.

Japan’s fertility rate, or average number of children a woman is expected to give birth to in her lifetime, dropped to 1.36 in 2019, going below the 1.40 mark for the first time in eight years.

It marked the fourth consecutive year of decline, according to data released by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare on June 5.

The fertility rate for 2019 slid by 0.06 point from the figure for 2018, significantly down from the 0.01 point level of the preceding three years.

The fertility rate of 1.36 put Japan far from the target of 2.07, the level needed to maintain the population.

By prefecture, Okinawa had the highest fertility rate at 1.82, while Tokyo reported the lowest at 1.15.

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13436216

Why is that?

6 months from now, will we end up with a baby boom or a divorce boom or both?

Stress levels among women are going through the roof as more husbands spend time at home teleworking and slacking on household chores, a study suggests.

A survey by home builder Sekisui House Ltd. revealed that stress levels among married women are soaring under the “stay home policy” to prevent a spread of COVID-19 infections.

Many women complained that they feel a much heavier housework burden with their husbands now staying home 24/7.

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13426902

Japan has produced a wide range of manga and anime about the horrors of World War II, but the recent undertaking for war-related publication has been described as “beyond imagination.”

The manga is not set in Japan, but in the former Soviet Union. It was adapted from “The Unwomanly Face of War,” a book by 2015 Nobel Literature Prize-winning author Svetlana Alexievich.
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Many episodes in Alexievich’s book are not yet covered in the manga version. Kodansha plans to release a sequel.

“Many producers have assumed that manga must be easy to understand to have a broader appeal,” manga editor Ogino said. “But there are readers out there who will flock to a work that explores serious topics if it is presented with a good lead.”

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13353361

Japan's approach to controlling the spread of the virus:

[1. ]An early grassroots response to rising infections was crucial. ... experts praise the role of Japan's contact tracers, which swung into action after the first infections were found in January. The fast response was enabled by one of Japan's in-built advantages - its public health centres, which in 2018 employed more than half of 50,000 public health nurses who are experienced in infection tracing. In normal times, these nurses would be tracking down more common infections such as influenza and tuberculosis.

While countries such as the US and the UK are just beginning to hire and train contact tracers as they attempt to reopen their economies, Japan has been tracking the movement of the disease since the first handful of cases were found. These local experts focused on tackling so-called clusters, or groups of infections from a single location such as clubs or hospitals, to contain cases before they got out of
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[2.] The early response was also boosted by an unlikely happening. Japan's battle with the virus first came to mainstream international attention with its much-criticised response to the Diamond Princess cruise ship in February that led to hundreds of infections. Still, the experience of the ship is credited with providing Japanese experts with invaluable data early in the crisis on how the virus spread, as well as catapulting it into the public consciousness.
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[3.] Experts are also credited with creating an easy-to-understand message of avoiding what are called the "Three Cs" - closed spaces, crowded spaces and close-contact settings - rather than keeping away from others entirely.

"Social distancing may work, but it doesn't really help to continue normal social life," said Hokkaido University's Prof Suzuki. "The 'Three Cs' are a much more pragmatic approach and very effective, while having a similar effect."

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/did-japan-just-beat-the-coronavirus-without-lockdowns-or-mass-testing