Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

The bulletin board on the first floor of the small local community center was full. On a Saturday morning, the few classrooms available to rent by the center are all filled in with activities like "International Exchange," "Basic English," "Singing," "Calligraphy," among others. Various activity groups have their little posters pasted on the nearby walls, advertising in pictures and words their membership, meeting times, and the reason others should join. From the first look of the place, it seemed as if the community center is really a meeting place for all members of the community.

On the 4th floor of a nondescript office building, a five-minute walk from bustling Chiba train station is a series of small booths fronted by a reception. Those who are casually passing by may see that these booths resemble small meeting rooms, where those keen on privacy would be interviewed for jobs or thrash out the details of business ideas. That these booths are a "party space," as their operator calls them, would not be the first thing that would pop into the casual observers' minds. Their hidden secretive structure does not indicate their users wanting to talk to many people, as one would at a party. Yet, it is in these small series of rooms that many romantic couples are formed, after paying good money. After those interested sign up for a "party for people looking to get married" (婚活パーティー), paying JPY 5,000 (for a man) or JPY 1,500 (for a woman) each, they are directed to these little booths, where they are told that they will, in quick succession each...

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.