Corona, Japan, everyday
In early March, in the midst of confusion due to the coronavirus, I came to Korea for spring break.
While studying in Osaka, I have been living in a living since mid-February because of the likelihood, and I have been stuck at home except when I go to the school library to borrow books or go out to buy food. Although I’m a housemate, I have to go to a cafe, read books, and organize my thesis with my laptop, where I have to live outside for five to six hours a day. I felt like my body was getting a fever due to excessive stress, so I bought a thermometer right away and took it every morning, day, evening, and before bed. Various temperatures from 36.2 degrees to 37.3 degrees Celsius. When 37.3 degrees came out, the heart pounded to the point that it might have come up from the lower floor due to the inter-floor noise. But since I only saw this pattern for a couple of hours after dinner, I pleaded with myself, saying it would be okay.
After coming to Korea, I took my temperature like a habit. At that time, Osaka was a time when patients were spreading around a live house, that is, a narrow indoor concert hall, and there were two live houses on the streets that were passing to go to school, so I couldn’t get rid of my mind. Moreover, since early March was the time when the number of confirmed cases was explosively increasing in Korea, it seems that the stress made my body even worse. For two weeks after returning to Korea, I was at home or in and out of the cafe in front of my house, and if I wanted to get out of the way or had a sore throat, I often took a fever and rested. I didn’t know in a dream that a mask I bought and put on as a countermeasure against pollen allergy would be so helpful. After 2 weeks, there were no abnormal symptoms in the body. The trend of confirmed patients also seemed to subside, so I recovered my daily routine little by little under the condition that I did not take off the mask except when I wash my hands once an hour and drink a drink at a cafe.
However, this time, Japan is imposing a ban on entry to Korean citizens!
In fact, from this time on, I often laughed a little bit. Even if I hurried back, there were no tickets. First of all, I decided to stay in Korea because I was able to afford to pay the rent for about half a year by collecting scholarships I received in Japan in the name of living expenses. At this time, the stress was enormous, and this time, my tongue became a panic again. It was so severe that the root of the tongue was inflamed, and I mistaken this for a sore throat.After confirming that the body temperature was normal, I found the otolaryngologist I used to go to, and I heard similar words about what I did so that my tongue became a mop. I laughed humbly, and in a day my mouth was cleared thanks to the amazing medicine prescribed by the hospital.
Originally, I was thinking of returning to Japan on April 6, but after being trapped in Korea due to the coronavirus (?), I sent a long e-mail to the school. Since this was the first time in the school, I asked to watch the future trends, and the professors understood. In my second year of Ph.D., it was time to write the thesis in earnest, and all I had in my hand were two books I had borrowed from school. There was also a limit to searching the Internet every day and finding data. I have to submit my thesis at the end of next year, and this thought starts to build up stress. Again, it is gastritis. However, I made a firm determination to eat lightly, and the gastritis disappeared like melting snow in a day.
In principle, it was a method of giving a scholarship if the person in charge went to the Academic Affairs Department to report survival and sign it. Special measures have been established. It is also said that all classes this semester are conducted by video. Last Tuesday, I met the lab people and professors for the first time, and I couldn’t be that awkward. Everyone was worried that they couldn’t do research properly because they couldn’t go out to get data even though they were in Japan. Even a Chinese research student who decided to come from this semester has not yet entered the country (though of course it is). Korea is rapidly decreasing the number of confirmed cases and is recovering daily life even though it is limited, but Japan seems to have started from now on, so the heart was complex and subtle.
Originally, it was planned to return to Japan on May 6th, but Japan, of course, extended the entry ban for another month. Anyway, all classes for this semester are conducted online, so even if you go back to Japan, you will probably only repeat the same daily routine as in Korea. To be cool, it would be much safer to be in Korea. First of all, I was writing thesis and searching for data as far as I could, and making a list so that I could go back to Japan and solve the things I couldn’t do in the future. Can I handle this enormous amount of information? I started to think like this.
Also, since I can’t write a thesis, I thought it would be okay to learn a programming language first, so I poured the money I received from the disaster support into the book. It was HTML and PHP that I was running the homepage at a time when I touched it, but it helped me a little. In fact, at that time, I didn’t even know that it was programming, and I learned it with so-called yamae, so it wasn’t very helpful, but it gave me about a gram of confidence that I could do it anyway. In between the daily life that was taken for granted by the corona, my health anxiety, programming, and dissertation were somewhat disparate. If I had been going through my usual routine, I wouldn’t even have thought of challenging these things. Also, I would not have noticed the pattern (?) that my health was deteriorating. Life, even though it seemed to be clogged up and there was no answer at all, somehow, one road was broken. This is one of the biggest lessons I have learned from the coronavirus outbreak.
But one more thing, something unexpected happened. The period of permission to stay in Japan is until July 2nd, and in principle, I have to fill out the documents and apply for renewal 3 months in advance, but I couldn’t return, so there was nothing I could do. The school replied not to worry about getting a new visa even if the period of stay expired, but the problem is with my house contract in Japan. Looking through the website of the Ministry of Justice, there is a saying that those whose period of stay expires in March, April, May, and June will first extend the period of stay by three months, but in July there is no word yet. I just hope that this will be resolved as well as the cases so far. This will surely bother my stomach or tongue, but this time I’m going to try to close my mind and block it as much as possible. However, I think the best solution is to restore the normal routine because the corona is quickly ended or the treatment is out of control worldwide. I am hoping that the day when I can freely travel between Korea and Japan and conduct research and daily life will come back sooner or later, and I am doing my best to do what I can do in Korea while taking care of my health at this moment.