Return Travel, Koshien Baseball & Obon

Hello!

I made it back to Japan from the US.

Return travel was smooth. The main hurdle was testing negative for COVID 72 hour before the flight. Along with this, there is also a Japanese government test form that the test facility is supposed to fill out for you - in the past, this has been difficult, as the form used to require a doctor's signature. So, before this summer, you had to find a place that would get you the results in the required timeframe (within 72 hours of your flight) and sign a special form.

Starting in June, though, the Japanese government modified its COVID procedures and made the form much easier to fill out - it now only requires the name of the facility doing the test and a doctor does not need to sign it.

Also, if the facility provides you with a result form that contains all the necessary information, you no longer even need to fill out the Japanese government form. But, the form is still recommended just in case.

I ended up getting my test done at Walgreens - they offer a few different tests which meet the Japanese requirements. The quickest turn around is one that gets you results within 2 hours. There is a group on facebook of people who are working to return to Japan and that was the test that many people recommended.

One you have your test results, you can upload that into a Japanese web application along with some other information and they assign your return application a color. Blue is the color you want because that means you can enter Japan without any quarantine requirements. A few hours of uploading my information, my application turned blue and I was all set to get back.

On my initial flight back to the US, the plane was pretty packed - all seats seemed to be full. On the return flight to Japan, though, the flight might have only been about 25% full. Most people (including me) had a whole row to themselves.

After getting back, I spent the night in Tokyo before heading back to Kobe via the bullet train on Wednesday evening, stopping at a few Tokyo area stores and restaurants.

Things were fine in the apartment when I got back - no bug or humidity issues. I had left my dehumidifier on when I left to help keep moisture levels under control and it was still running when I returned.

I might have mentioned before that Koshien, Japan's high school summer baseball tournament, started the week before I came back to Japan. I spent two days this past week going to games.

Getting tickets to the games was much easier this year than in past years. Previously, the main way to get tickets was to arrive early at the stadium and wait in line for same-day ticket sales. This year, due to COVID, all tickets were sold online.

It took a bit of doing to find a site that would sell tickets to me while I was out of the country, but I was able to find one. Once at the stadium, there was a QR code scanner that you could use to print your tickets and enter the stadium.

Koshien has mainly returned to normal, despite the pandemic. The stadium was mostly full for the games. The only major difference, though, is that the school's brass bands are limited in size - maybe about half of the band is able to attend the games.

Music is one area in which you still see a lot of COVID precautions taken - at my school, when students play any kind of wind instrument (like a recorder), they have to use special plastic separator guards on their desks that give them an isolated spot versus the other students.

This coming week, we have a summer school activity - junior high students from Kobe will come to a local university and we will work with them there on various English activities. After that, I will go back to school for a few days to end the week.

Also, meant to mention that this past week is considered Japan's "obon" week. This is a set of holidays that happen around the first or second week of August. During these holidays, Japanese people travel to spend time with their families.

Regular Japanese teachers do not actually get the obon holidays off from work - they have to use paid time off during this week even though the school is closed. It is different for foreign English teachers, though - we receive some extra summer vacation days that we can use for these days.

No students are at school yet, they still have break for a few more weeks yet. The new semester officially starts on September 1st, but I think that some students come back to school a few days early to do summer school work.

I brought back some souvenirs for Japanese teachers from the USA - reusable shopping bags from Trader Joe's are really popular among Japanese people, so I grabbed a bunch of those to give away. Whole Foods bags are also popular, but I did not make any souvenir stops there.

Photos in link below!

Until next time,