Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

As Tokyo declares the second state of emergency for the ever-increasing number of cases of COVID-19 in the greater metropolitan area, one of the focal points of the lasting long-term damage from the policy may be education. In a nation that is already facing a steadily declining and aging population, with an ever-lower number of births before COVID, any government signaling that the pandemic is not completely under control is only going to dampen the enthusiasm of its young citizens reproducing. The possibilities of offsprings facing interrupted education and a not-so-vibrant economy in which jobs are difficult to find will only further the deterrence.

The biggest news of the year that just passed is no doubt the global spread of COVID-19. Media outlets and people around the world have over time became front and center in a historical moment, as a global pandemic, unprecedented in the lifetimes of most of today's residents on Earth, ravaged nations and economies around the world, disrupting everyday life. As different states came face-to-face with the speed with which the virus claimed the lives of their citizens, the media coverage increasingly centered on how the disease seemed to take on different trajectories in different places, hurting some countries much more than others.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the world, more and more consumers are shunning the potential dangers of brick-and-mortar stores in favor of their online alternatives. Major e-commerce platforms, along with their counterparts peddling everything from inter-personal communication to insurance products, have become the primary beneficiaries of the pandemic era. Yet, as their market values hit one record high after another, the global world of "big tech" is also facing unprecedented scrutiny as governments around the world finally begin to grasp and rein in their influence.

It is no longer news that Japan's provincial areas are facing a steep long-term decline , as the country's overall population decreases and ever-more opportunities for work and high living standards become concentrated in Tokyo. As provincial areas face a steady decline in population, the local tax base, proportional to the declining number of people and businesses that make the locality their permanent home, is also declining in tandem. With the same areas facing ballooning costs from pensions and healthcare as the population ages, the fiscal shortfall threatens to break the fragile balance of payments for the local governments.

"Digital transformation" has become a hot trend in the non-IT business world in the past few years. As a slew of software firms come to maturity peddling productivity-enhancing programs for more legacy firms, the legacy firms have come to grips with a renewed sense of crisis that they need to adopt more IT in their day-to-day operations just to keep up with tech firms that can achieve so much value with relatively few employees. The idea of using the tech firms' own products to help retool the likes of manufacturers and traditional brick-and-mortar service operators is becoming not just mainstream but urgent as they adapt to the work-from-home world of COVID-19.

Recently, Nike released a short advertisement on Youtube that depicts three Japanese young athletes of non-mainstream ethnic identities (two Korean, one half-black) overcoming discrimination and bullying through their participation in their schools' and communities' soccer teams. Despite the intention of crafting a universal message of social inclusion in a country grasping an unprecedented question of what to make of an increase in Japanese residents of non-Japanese descent. The ad was picked up by international media outlets as a sign of the country's continued reorientation from centuries of self-designated ethnic and cultural homogeneity.

For many Japanese people, the first and probably the most common type of "foreign food" that they encounter and partake in their lives is Chinese food. Ever since the first Chinese migrants brought the cuisine to the Japanese masses in the pre-World War II era, Chinese food has been the go-to choice for those looking to fill their stomachs on the cheap. With the country's defeat in World War II, many Japanese residents on the Chinese mainland were uprooted and returned to Japan, where many eeked out a living by peddling foods of their previously adopted homelands.