Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

It is no longer news that the Japanese population is shrinking and aging. With the country's birth rate hitting record lows and having no signs of a consistent rebound, for all sorts of businesses in Japan, the prospects of an ever-tinier domestic market are a cause for great worry. And that worry will hit no industry faster than kindergarten operators. Providing a once-in-a-lifetime service, these businesses rely purely on the number of children in the country. They are stuck with the decline, having no option to target repeat customers or expand the consumer base in any way.

It seems to be a social norm everywhere in the productive world that imbibing alcohol is an after-hours activity. Because people are generally consigned to work during the day, drinking before dinner during weekdays is frowned upon as the behavior of the unemployed alcoholic. And in a world where many proscribe to the idea that a good day off is a productive day off (in a sense of getting hobbies and other things done outside of paid work), drinking while there is still sunlight out on the weekends is not exactly the most socially acceptable behavior either.

There is no point in sugarcoating it: I did not handle my first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine well. Even though people say the first dose should lead to anything more than some arm pain afterward, my reaction was much more severe. Aside from the thumping arm pain that lasted a better part of a month, I found myself sleeping the whole day the day after and even a part of the day after that. Considering that those who reacted badly to the first dose tend to also react heavily to the second, the anticipation for fevers, pains, and worse have been with me ever since I had the injection a few hours ago.

A small L-shaped counter with six seats, a long cabinet crowded with bottles of alcohol, and two TVs playing old movies and music videos...the little hidden bar is simple enough that one could mistake it for a nightspot in rural Africa . But this little bar was in the back of a nondescript office building in a nondescript neighborhood in a nondescript part of Japan. For 18 years, the owner of the bar ran the place by himself, relying on the old regular customers who have grown to know him personally as they came in week after week, month after month, for chilling and quiet chats.

At first sight, Squid Game  has a lot against it on the road to global popularity. It is unabashedly violent, refers to some idiosyncrasies of modern-day South Korea that many people around the world may not be familiar with, and does not stack its cast with the young, beautiful, and famous. Yet, what has been termed as the South Korean version of The   Hunger Games , speaking directly out against the evils of social stratification by taking class schisms to its extremely violent logic end, has somehow become the biggest original series in the entire history of Netflix.

The setup at one of the University of Tokyo's bigger conference halls is also designed for a major event. Hundreds of staff members checking paperwork, rows of chairs for people waiting their turn, and elaborate signs and partitions to direct the flow of traffic have turned the normally empty conference hall into one that serves a single purpose: an assembly line of getting as many COVID shots into people's arms as possible in a short time. The massive amount of human and physical resources, not to mention the planning, that went into the affair certainly displays the dedication of the university to its staff and students.

The 24-hour gym that I go to near my apartment is moving up the technology chain. Replacing a contactless card key system that allows users to go in and out, the gym recently introduced a facial recognition system that allows those registered to open the door just by scanning their faces. It is more convenient for users who are unwilling to carry their card keys around. And from the gym's perspective, it effectively prevents users from lending their card keys to their non-paying friends. The goal is to eventually entice all users to switch over to the facial recognition system and get rid of all card key users. Some users seem to be quite resistant. Even though the gym sent multiple emails to users about registering their faces for the new system, and posted the same notice on the gym's premises, the majority of the users continue to show up with their card keys. Even though gym staff is around when these users visit, the users do not seem to have any intention of speaking to t