Jet lag and Quarantine

translators, Chihiro Otsuka & Charlie Lovell-Jones

My sister’s ashes were laid to rest in her grave today. The ceremony had been scheduled according to my
travel plan in December for going back to Japan, but I had to miss it. The attendees of the ceremony were my sister’s husband (my brother in-law), his sister, her husband and a friend, as well as Mr. Uchida from th
funeral services. Unlike the day Mozart was buried under the dark gray sky of Europe, Momoko, my sister,
was rested with my parents in Wakaba-cho town, under the beautiful blue sky of Tokyo. Half of her ashes will also be placed in her husband’s family grave.

Yesterday, I was looking at a tiny portion of her ashes that I brought back to my home in Brussels. So white…I momentarily thought of mixing it with my mother’s ashes, but didn’t do so.

You never know how hard it is to cope with jet lag until you try it. I guess traveling over multiple time zones overworks one’s liver, as I always feel so dull after a long flight. It is also inevitable that I feel highly energized in the middle of the night, no matter how tired I am. I can sleep long hours right after a long flight and cope with the time difference well for the first few days, because I usually get excited being in a new place. But then, after pushing myself to wake up and work continuously for about a week, I get really, really tired. All I can do is take a rest whenever I feel sleepy, even for a short while. I have been traveling around the world for over 40 years, but I have never got used to having jet lag. Rather, it takes longer to recover from it as I get older. I finally feel over it after a few weeks pass from my arrival. I then suddenly think, “Ummm, jet lag? Where did it go?” I can sleep at night, and that becomes the norm.

The Japanese government introduced quarantine policies at the border to contain the pandemic, and all
travelers from outside of Japan are required to go through a two-week self-quarantine. That’s an ideal length of time to fix jet lag.

About a year ago, a partial quarantine at a “government-designated location” was added to the requirements for travelers entering Japan from certain countries. “Quarantine in a government-designated location” means a hotel-quarantine, and I found it very challenging. For my first hotel quarantine, I stayed in a twin room (lucky!) at the Marroad International Hotel in Narita, near the airport. Thanks to a cute airport dog, all the fruit I had packed in my suitcase for the hotel stay were confiscated. A cold meal three times a day became my only choice. There was also a hotel-wide announcement every morning at 6 am, “In order to test those who will leave today, blah blah blah….” Then at 7 am, “we will start serving you breakfast. Please do not step out of your room,” a meal announcement that of course, repeated three times every day. The moments when I received meals were the only times I was allowed to open the door of my room. I had to stay in that room for the first three days after my arrival. I felt so exhausted from the second night.

My second hotel quarantine was when my sister had become comatose after a cardiopulmonary arrest. I flew back right after I heard the news. It was the beginning of June 2021. No exception was granted even though I told the airport officer about my reason for flying back. “Please call us from your hotel if something happens,” said the officer. “What do you mean by that?” I asked. “Well, a funeral, or something like that,” said the officer. “May I see her before then??” I asked. Frustrated to the bone, I stayed in an unbearably tiny single room in an APA hotel in Shiomi, Tokyo. My meals were even worse this time, and there was no miso soup (or any sort of soup) nor salad on the menu. After my three-day quarantine, I rushed to the hospital. Even after that, I still had to answer an auto-call from the government Covid app a few times a day to notify them that I was at home, quarantining. If I missed the call, I had no way of calling back. So I always felt remorseful when I missed it. Shortly after my return, I got a phone number for a public health centre through one of my contacts. I called them and said, “visiting my sister in a coma is utmost essential travel!” After being passed from one section to another, I got their response: “After all, you are not legally bound to this order. Please just make sure to avoid using public transportation.” I felt so validated by the authorities that I started visiting my sister in hospital without any hesitation.

My third hotel quarantine was again in Narita. It was the Toyoko-Inn Hotel. I asked, “May I have a larger
room?” To which the clerk responded, “May we ask why?” I answered: “My luggage is large and I need to
practice the violin.” They gave me the smallest room out of all three hotels I stayed in for quarantine. Hmm, should I complain?

After a 13-hour flight, I had to take a Covid test, install Covid apps, show various documents and wait for a few hours to get the test result. I heard that in some cases you had to wait for eight hours at the airport to complete these procedures. My test number was 241, and they called “240, 243….”. “Did they skip me because I’m positive?” My stress level went so high until I received a negative result. Then, finally, I was allowed to leave the waiting area and got onto the bus to the quarantine hotel. The bus was covered with PVC sheets which completely blocked from sight both the passengers inside and the pedestrians outside. Were we, the passengers, prisoners?

The bus arrived at the hotel and, after many long hours, all the passengers were assigned to their rooms. By that time, I was completely exhausted. All I wanted was to rest in my room as soon as possible…. I was too tired to complain about its size. I wonder if anyone would have had the energy to negotiate an upgrade to their room in such a situation. In this hotel, the room door chimed if I opened it even a little bit. So I named this hotel “APA prison/prison hotel.” I got a canker sore while staying in the APA Prison. I did regenerative movement exercise (katsugen undo) to keep myself active. But violin? There was no way to practice….

After that, I was allowed to go back to my home in Tokyo. For travelers like myself whose family could not
pick us up from the airport, it was mandatory to take a taxi home.

Even after arriving home, I had to keep sending my photo every day via the Covid app to notify authorities of my location until my quarantine period was over. I felt scared to go out after these 14 days of quarantine. I took PCR tests three times and got negative results every time, but what about the public in Japan? Was it safe for me to go out?

I am writing this to recall what it was like when I had to quarantine. But I think I will eventually forget it.

I think losing memories is one of the skills humans have. If all the mothers in the world never forgot the
excruciating pains of the labour they experienced, there wouldn’t be any siblings for anyone.

I lost my beloved sister… her ashes were laid to rest in our family grave six months after her death. As I
mentioned, I was planning to attend the ceremony, but had to give up on that plan because the hotel
quarantine period was extended to six days from three days due to the emerging Omicron variant. I regretted that I didn’t go, but I knew it was beyond my capacity to bear the six-day hotel quarantine. My regret did not come from missing the ceremony itself, but rather from causing trouble for those who expected me to be there. I think that kind of feeling is very Japanese.

The fact is that I am not in Japan and don’t live there. I have misperceived myself – I have lived everywhere, traveling so much over the last 40 years. And I have my family, who have wholeheartedly supported me having such life.

Well, I am not sure how much I can travel next year. After all, my father, my mother, and my only sister
“moved” to the other side of the world! I am sure that they look over me from high up in the sky and smile at me wandering here and there in the world.

“Gassho” (合掌）Putting my hands together.

From Brussels, at the end of December 2021