Chapter 1: The New Norm
When we go outside now, there are people with white face coverings everywhere. No matter what facet of life you walk, or what position in society you have, there are now two more things that connect us all, these white (sometimes grey, sometimes black) pieces of cloth around our faces and the fear of an invisible enemy.
It is the new norm, the new fashion accessory that is in vogue, albeit it has to be used, otherwise you risk endangering those around you. Some people like theirs plain white, others a fashionable denim with selvedge lining, and yet others with creative imagery on theirs. Masks are everywhere, including strewn on the street and in the rivers.
The masks allow us to do something that might not be possible without them, that is to leave the house. We are able to escape the bleak interiors of our homes-turned-prisons and breath the fresh air (through a mask). That presents its own unique challenges though and creates a whole different world that was there pre-2020.
Chapter 2: Bikes
Escaping the mundane living room that has been converted to an office has been hugely important in breathing life back into my routine. Notably over this summer this included two things: biking around Kaihin Makuhari and climbing mountains. A lot of mountains, and a lot of bike riding.
Outdoors is essential medicine for those of us stuck indoors with our (very comfortable) Zoom eligible jobs. While I am not blind to how lucky I am to be able to still work during a pandemic without risk of infection, I still find time to complain it seems.
Living in Chiba, it has the advantage of being able to easily ride a bike anywhere. The prefecture is quite flat, and quite open, so getting away from people (pretty essential when social distancing is the new norm!) is quite easy. The big drawback with Chiba though is the very thing that makes riding a bike wonderful, it is hopelessly flat. No mountains, and the closest “nice ocean” is still a long way on the other side of the coast.
Biking around with my friends during the downtime between teaching helped keep me sane these last few months, and I expect it to keep on alleviating my thirst for outdoors while spending a majority of my time indoors in front of a screen. Something was still missing though…
Chapter 3: Mountains
Okay, so I don’t like flat places. What can I do? Well, it is good to remember that social distancing needs to be included in whatever it is that one wants to do outside. Mountains have social distancing. They have a lot of distance between them. The alps in particular in Japan are some of the most massive natural structures in Japan in fact. So I opted to roll the dice with public transportation (hard to social distance on a bus or a train) and ride to the mountains. I was not disappointed.
Perhaps it might seem counterproductive to travel during a pandemic. Normally, it is. It is the perfect way to spread a highly contagious disease and people who travel are incredibly selfish I feel. Japan had something going for itself though. People were cautions. People learned to live with the presence of the virus and both take it seriously as well as not sacrifice their life happiness. Incredible, I thought. In the United States things were being shut down left and right and the whole country was falling apart, but out in the mountains of Japan, it was easy to forget about that, if only for a few days.
I selfishly tromped around the mountains. I breathed in the mountain air and try to save it all for when I had to be cramped in my small 1DK apartment in Chiba again. I saved thousands of images to my brain so that I could remember them when I closed my eyes (it also helps to take photos of all these places!) The mountains were salvation for me, and I left only wanting more. One positive thing about COVID is that it has left me to my own devices in Japan, not being able to travel, and hence has created an unyielding thirst for nature in the land of the rising sun. There are so many more mountains here and so many more national parks here that I don’t think I will go abroad actually anytime soon. The masks are still here in the mountains and there are more people than I thought at first, but the advantages of being there rather than here are just far too great. I may not be in the mountains now, but I will certainly be back.
“Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.” — John Muir
Chapter 4: Family
The final chapter of my corona journey now is my family. Never before has it been harder to know that I have an entire ocean between myself and them. COVID-19 has made it impossible to go back home, and with my parents being close or over the age of 60, I have never been more worried. What if they get sick? What if something bad happens? How do I go back to see them? I have always been keenly aware of my family and how the distance between us physically has not dented the distance between our close knit clan, but COVID had me second guessing myself.
Christmas was always a time to go back and reunite, to refresh my identity as an American, and as a Godin. But it looked like that would not be happening this year. We would instead be spending Christmas on Zoom. What. A. Drag.
Luckily I have spent plenty of time talking with my family online. This has been nothing new to me, as I would do it quite often before the pandemic, so I am fairly adept at seeing when they want to hang up or taking turns with speaking, but I am looking forward to the day I can hug both my parents and both my brothers again and sit on the couch with them being a couch potato.
This may not happen soon, but in the meantime, I will count my blessings that my family is still there for me and we can still talk. In the end, I think corona has shown us all that we have many things we take for granted, whether that be biking around with friends, exploring mountains in our own backyards, or being able to talk with our family easily. Corona is a lot of things, and it certainly is not a positive thing, but it an eye-opener.
