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.

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.