Welcome to Music Matters Podcasts with Darrell Craig Harris, talking about all things

music with celebrities, artists, music business insiders, and more.

Hi, everybody, welcome to Music Matters, a podcast series about all things

music and all things creative in this case. I have a legendary reporter who works

for International news service,

Yuri Kajjama, hopefully I said that correctly.

And she's an amazing lady. We first met because I was actually playing with her son,

Yasaku, who's a very well-known traditional drummer, a drum,

Tycho drummer from Japan.

And we talked about coming out of the podcast.

How you doing, Yuri?

Oh, fine.

Thank you.

And thank you for having me. So you're in Tokyo, correct? Yes. What's life like in Tokyo these days? Well, actually, you know, because of the coronavirus, a lot of people are wearing masks, but as you know, Japanese people tend to wear masks from before.

So now there are more people wearing masks, but it's so crowded, I mean, in Tokyo.

So I mean, and so it's just very difficult to social distance.

Yeah, and it's the end of the year when everybody goes out and tries to party,

but I mean, but it would be it would be more if it weren't for the coronavirus.

So even with the scaling back it still feels really crowded and very difficult to social distance.

There's never been a lockdown in Japan, but there has been issues of warnings off and on throughout this period when people are asked to close their businesses early or close them entirely, but it's not all voluntary. There's no nobody's you know nobody gets

penalized for doing X or Y or Z and it's just been like voluntary but you know how

Japanese people are pretty orderly and they are obedient.

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