Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

Room 706...707...708. I was told by the lady, in her thickly accented Japanese, to head to the 7th floor of a nondescript high-rise apartment building a five-minute walk from the train station. The door to Unit 708 is not marked by anything in particular, with no sign whatsoever that is a business of any sort. It is unsurprising though. The building is, after all, a purely residential one, and a solidly middle-classed one at that. Surely the neighbors of Unit 708 would not appreciate it if they knew that some Chinese lady is operating a massage parlor within this exclusive symbol of well-lived white-collar life.

One of the most evident beneficiaries of the rush to work from home in the COVID era is video call services. With the advent of fast internet connections, people now matter-of-factly speak to each other over Zoom, Teams, or Skype video calls, for both the purpose of work meetings with colleagues and clients or casual meetups with friends and family members. Some people relish the ability to talk from the comfort of their living rooms, clad in pajama bottoms, to whoever they need to speak to with the push of a button. Some have come to consider video calls to be at the forefront of the vaulted goal of digital transformation of the workplace.

In front of my apartment in Chiba, there is an elderly man in a uniform every morning from 7am. Tasked by the neighborhood committee, the man is at the same spot every weekday to greet the young children passing through on their way to school. "Good morning!" The elderly man never fails to say in his loudest voice as each child passes through. His voice is loud enough that I, living in the apartment unit right next to the road where he stands, can be woken up in the morning just by his voice. Most of the children he greets are equally vocal, responding in equally loud voices almost as a routine day after day.

A mutually agreed ceasefire has finally taken hold after a short eleven-day rocket-and-air-raid war between Israel and Gaza. But the ceasefire only took place after hundreds of protests across the world (both in solidarity with Israel and the Palestinians) and pressure from major powers around the world. This ceasefire, unfortunately, was too late for the more than 200 people who perished in the conflict, thousands who were injured, and more than 50,000 people who were displaced in Gaza as Israeli airstrikes destroyed their homes for being suspected centers of operation for the ruling political party-cum-militia Hamas.

The business of meeting new people is, in the pre-COVID days, was a lucrative one here in Japan. Even in the most residential of suburban neighborhoods, Japanese-style izakayas and Western-style bars are physical locations where friends and colleagues get together to complain about the travails of their daily lives over glasses of beer or cups of sake. For those without anyone to speak to, a bit more money in host or hostess bars will furnish the customers with male or female companionship, not for erotic purposes, but simply to lend an ear to the conversations.

Even a casual purveyor of Japanese pop culture would be familiar with the concept of "kawaii." Loosely translated as "cute," it introduces a certain immature, baby-like naughtiness to everything from interior design to the pages of comic books, reflecting a nation often obsessed with seeking out both physical and mental youth even in the twilight years. Nowhere is kawaii more apparent than in the designs of female girl bands, or "idol groups" in the local parlance, that often consist of teens in matching uniforms dancing in sync to bubblegum pop songs about first love and growing up to leave adolescence behind. 

The modern white-collar work, in many ways, is designed for the benefit of extroverts. Those who are happy to talk to many people fit themselves suited for essentially communicative roles, both external-facing, winning new businesses from potential clients, and internal, handling tricky relationships among colleagues. A service-oriented economy is fundamentally one where the engine of growth is greased by collaboration among people to get things done and fulfill customers' needs. In this world, introverts, many of them not fond of speaking to strangers, are more or less forced to be more communicative just to get ahead professionally.