Itâs a bit hard to nail down. Itâs always been a country of weird dichotomies.
In general, people here are much more conscious of others, even than themselves. This is deeply ingrained and can be positive or negative. But it has meant that everyone has been wearing masks since february, and that people mostly donât do dumb things that might spread the virus. Everytime we see news reports from other countries my wife is shocked by how thoughtless lots of the people are being. (That said, thereâs almost no âdistancingâ as thereâs rarely room for that)
Thereâs also an unhealthy general fear of everything, which is stoked by the endless tv shows, but in this case has probably been a positive.
So thereâs not really a sense that people are fatigued with the restrictions. I mean, a lot of people here are also a bit bored of watching netflix every day, but thereâs unlikely to be any pushback.
But Japan is a country with a massive restaurant / entertainment / domestic travel industry, so the government is much more focused on making sure that isnât too financially damaged. As such, the government has been encouraging everyone to go out and travel and eat as much as possible. Which Japanese people ordinarily love to do.
So you have this somewhat flipped situation where peopleâs natural caution is telling them to stay home, but the government is telling them to go out.
So, despite no real official lockdowns, everywhere was pretty quiet from March to Sept as most people stayed at home. But since Oct the number of people has been gradually increasing back to almost pre-Covid levels. Finally the government has overcome a lot of peopleâs fears.
Itâs not exactly fatigue, though there is a little of that, itâs more that people have kind of stopped being afraid of it.
Despite lots of people going into town these days, they do all wear masks and avoid risky activities as much as possible. when sober. The only problem is that itâs hard to wear masks and avoid risks when eating and drinking in a tiny Tokyo bar.
