Zoom family time

 Had another Zoom Time with Okaasan yesterday.

Big voices, waves, inane chat to fill no-verbal-response silence. A few random questions to the nursing staff about Covid booster shot schedule in the care home.

Okaasan was on her side in bed. Nose tubes. Hands covered with huge mittens. Face a bit red and puffy. But she did react to the nurses touch and voices. Our voices. There was maybe a smile, mouth movements and neck movement.

What more can I say. Or hope. Expect.

The Quasi State of Emergency ended here last week. Now we are free to go to bars and restaurants and drink alcohol in the evenings. Baseball is back to full capacity crowds. Being Japan - 99% of the population are wearing masks in all public situations. Actually you even see Japanese driving along ALONE in a car and wearing a mask...friends who work at universities say that classes will be back to face to face 100% from April.

New infection numbers are coming down, but slowly. March is the moving/changing life month for millions of Japanese. School and college start, job start, job transfer start, move home start - here in the north we are now seeing car license plates from other parts of the country and most families have somebody making a move of some sort. So Covid is having a move too.

When can we meet Okaasan face to face?? No info on that. The care home is continuing online for now. I guess until the big public holiday Golden Week at the start of May. Or after.

So, we can only hope that we can go to the care home and meet her...and dream of somehow this summer getting her in a wheelchair and wheeling her outside into the sunshine...into the car...doing all of that seems such a long time ago. 3 years ago since we did any of that.

Memories. Facebook reminded me this morning of end of March 2009 when we first moved to this house with Okaasan and I drifted back to my original blog postings about the move and starting our lives together here. I came across the story of my crazy dream about a two-headed Okaasan in the kitchen and us trying to tear the spirit head away!! I'd forgotten that.

Go back to 2009. March 29 for THAT one :-)

Quasi...the new normal...

 What's that experiment about heating up the water slowly and the frog never notices?

Kind of feel all of us living in Japan are kind of like that. Except heating up the water means somebody is taking an action to change the situation. When, in fact, it just feels like whoever has left us on the Pandemic setting of Life at Medium Low has buggered off to do something more interesting.

The Quasi State Of Emergency goes on and on. And on. I'm not sure if it will end, this month? Our lives putter on...the main result of the QSoE is that bars and restaurants close early and don't serve much/any alcohol, that there are still limits on crowd numbers at events and that care homes and hospitals severely limit public access.

Covid is rampaging around the schools now and the government is busy promoting vaccinations for kids. Dear Son and I got our coupons for booster shots, but we'll try to get Pfizer this time around and local clinics are full. So we'll wait a week or two and try again. I don't feel the urgency of before, as we just go on being careful and not meeting many people anyway.

The masks, screens, hand sprays are just part of life. The government has relaxed entry rules for foreign students and business people, and now returning Japanese and foreign residents can go directly home using public transport from their international flight to self-quarantine - if triple vaxed and negative on arrival. This last point was a huge step - and actually made me think I might go to the Uk later this year - if I could arrive on an international flight into Tokyo or Osaka, and then fly the same day up here to north Japan.

And then Putin invaded Ukraine.

Now Asia-Europe flights are detouring over the Middle East, and the usual 12 hour flights became 15....so that would be 15 hours in a mask on a flight...suddenly another year of Japan travel looks more attractive. It's a very good side-effect of all of this - actually seeing more of the country I call home now.

Okaasan?

Yes, this blog is meant to be about her. I DO remember!

We haven't seen her, or been offered another online meeting. Just get the care home bills to pay and information that she got her vaccination. Just waiting....if the QSoE ends...will the care home let us in for heavily supervised visits? A friend said her mother's home allows 10 mins a week chat thru a plastic sheet. Hoping for that, as a start.

And so. Waiting for spring. Temperatures are plus now. The roads are a total mess of melting snow. We spend a lot of time helping to rescue stuck vehicles in our street. My left knee is sore again because i've been lifting heavy, wet snow. My UK Facebook feed is full of green and flowers. 

North Japan. Still white. Still in a state of plodding on thru the pandemic.