Does Japan Need to Chill Out About its Response to the Coronavirus?

Japan, the country which I have lived in since summer 2004, is panicking itself into a tailspin.

In the past few days, this usually idyllic country has been rattled by the following:

School closures nationwide for the month of March, cancellations of public events, including that ever-so-sublimely-Japanese cultural tradition, cherry blossom viewing parties in Japan’s two largest cities with more likely to come; crowd-less baseball games; shutting down Tokyo Disneyland for two weeks; mass runs on toilet and tissue paper because their beloved, unnecessary-according-to-the-CDC face masks are sold out and last, and definitely the worst news yet:

Shutting down my favorite free outdoor foot bath!

My favorite foot bath is usually populated with friendly folks, but not on this first day of March.

But wait. I have good news.

Turns out the foot bath closure was a false alarm on my part. Pipe is merely backed up. Or so they say…

But nah, for now, we’ll save the conspiracy theories about Coronavirus, er, COVID-19 (how come official scientific names lack even a modicum of poetry?).

In this case, I trust the source who I’ve known for three years. He owns the park golf course located at the hot springs resort that has the foot…