Vaccine is acoming...

 

There it is!  The documents telling Okaasan that she can soon make a reservation for her COVID-19 vaccination. Finally.

As you may have read in the media, Japan is crawling along on the vaccine roll out. Only 2% of the population have had a shot, and the vaccines first arrived here in March.

Many reasons: only doctors are allowed to give the shots, Japan runs domestic trials on all imported-vaccines, central government pushes much of the responsibility on local authorities, there was a whole thing about the syringes here not being able to deliver 5...or 6 shots each, and the entire system seemed SO slow off the mark.

Even now, the emphasis seems to be on people having to get thru on busy telephone lines to a local hospital or clinic. Where other countries have used huge venues, such as convention centers or stadiums for mass vaccinations - Japan is hardly doing that.

But. Okaasan is now near the starting point for the system.

Although.

HOW she is going to get it. We don't know. She is living in a care home, which has a hospital attached. We family members are not allowed to meet her at the moment.

Hopefully, she can just get wheeled downstairs to the hospital for 15 mins - and get a shot.

Or, will she have to leave the building and go somewhere in a car or ambulance? Do we arrange that? Does social services?

The care home/social services are equally, ridiculously slow about telling us families what is going to happen. It's just so symbolic of how slow official Japan is in response to things.

They all knew for weeks and weeks that these letters would be sent out. That millions of care home residents will need vaccinating. But no decision was taken about HOW? No information to us families, at all. So, we all get these letters and then we start phoning the home/social worker to ask what we should do?

It's these moments in Japan that just make me want to beat my head on a wall.

Anyway. There is some tiny movement of progress. I so hope it WILL be in the care home's attached hospital, quickly and with staff she vaguely knows.

And in other news.

Mother's Day 2021 came and went. We chose some artificial flowers and included a card with our photographs. I delivered it to the care home doors. Another year we don't get to be with her on that day.

And there are great cherry blossoms all over Sapporo! It's all pink and white. Glorious. But very windy. The infection numbers are surging again. Weeks it was 100-200 new cases a day. Now it's over 500 for this region of Japan. Still far far better than many other countries. But kind of a surprise locally.

(Down south: Osaka and Tokyo are around 1,000 new cases a day).

We had a big spring public holiday time. Most people stayed close to home. Local walks. TV. Reading books. Quiet time.

Oh. And I stopped working for the tour company. Several reasons. My choice. But still, a little sad. If the Pandemic hadn't come along I'd be in my 3rd year of guide work now. I was lucky they gave me social media writing to do. But copywriting for their new online shop really wasn't my thing. And who knows when the guiding will start again. Or, whether I will physically have the energy to do it again?

I notice recently that my energy levels are definitely lower. I need recovery time.

If guide work started again, it would be like starting all over and the necessary mental/physical energy would be enormous. I'm not sure I have it.

So. Time to read. Time to play with cats. Time to ponder garden weeds.