Moving up....

 Moving up....an Alert stage in COVID-19 warnings.

In Hokkaido, October numbers for daily reported cases of tested people who showed a positive result....bloody hell, that's a mouthful.....(but I know somebody will jump all over me and say it isn't SICK people...it isn't risky to others people...it isn't...THAT BAD!)

Anyway, the daily numbers of 20....to 40...50...have now topped 200 for the last few days. Hokkaido is officially Covid-19 Hotspot in Japan. Even made No. 2 slot on the national news last night, after that other hot mess situation in the US.

It was inevitable, really. We became the Hotspot. Because we are cold. We are the far north of Japan, it gets cold here first. It snows here first. We close the windows and doors and start living inside, in dry air. So our numbers started going up, as the temperatures went down to 10C and the first snow fell.

Local government has moved the Alert stage from 2 to 3, and given the whole nightlife district of the city a 10 pm curfew. Actually Stage 3 doesn't seem to mean much, just be more careful...and think about only going to places that have got clear safety measures in place.

Then, yesterday a national government person said: "maybe Hokkaido should be taken out of the Go To Travel Campaign system".....this is the Japanese domestic travel boosting discounted hotels/flights/food offer that some of us have been using the last few months.

If they take Hokkaido out, that'll really damage the winter tourism business here, the skiing, the  dog sledding, the onsen hotels - we were hoping at least for some domestic visitors.

And he and I were hoping to go to Okinawa in January. We could still go, of course. In Japan nothing in COVID times is compulsory - it's all done at Request level. But as a teacher, responsible person etc etc I just couldn't go domestic travelling if the government requests us to stay put.

So. Okaasan.

Here's the sign in the Care Home. IF this region moves  to Stage 4 - Family Visits will be stopped, again.

Of course.

So we'd better get in some good, meaningful visits while we can.

We'd stayed away from her for two weeks, after our recent domestic get away down south - in case we carried any risk for her and the rest of the care home.

The last month she's been good, much more talkative. Actual whole sentences about fall...clothes...colors...food...it's been wonderful.

Like those scenes in the Robin Williams movie about mentally-gone people who briefly came back into  communicative ability - seeing Okaasan talk, even a sentence with 7 words in it. Is wonderful.

Amazing to think that just a short time ago - what...5 years ago? I would come upstairs here to the computer and whine about yet ANOTHER mind-bendingly long dinner time with Okaasan's long rambling stories, round and round and round...

One of you Dear Readers said: "there'll come a time when you'll be happy if she talks"...and yup...it's now. I AM happy that she suddenly says: "The autumn leaves at XX Shrine are very beautiful".

Just a whole sentence. It was wonderful.

And then she went back to the strange chin jutting movement, and then closed her eyes and almost slept...and then just stared...

So. We'll grab the chances to have more wonderful, hopefully for a while yet.

But we don't think it'll be long. The time of no family contact is a-coming.

* And in other news...a friend here in Sapporo got infected and had to　spend 2 weeks in an isolation hotel with three lunch boxes a day. I was shocked, because she has always been very careful. But she is young and lives downtown. 

Inevitably she meets other young friends, in bars and cafes...downtown.

She had mild symptoms, fever, nausea, tight chest feeling - so she wasn't in a hospital. But sent to a local hotel, to while away time until the tests were negative. She was a member of a cluster, I guess, because she was there with the friends who got infected at the same time.

She is better now and allowed home again. Where she is being  even MORE careful.

And HEY! Good news!

Trump lost.