Wow!

Hello and welcome to the Bourn Japan podcast, probably the best way of learning about life in Japan, without actually being in Japan.

I'm your host Chris Broad, and we're joined as always by London's top Japan enthusiast, Mr. Pete Donaldson Pete, how you doing?

I'm good, I'm still enthusiastic about Japan, even though I probably won't be going anytime soon.

Yes, I don't think anyone will be going anywhere anytime soon.

Oh my god, you've been on holiday for the last few weeks, Pete, haven't you? You've just been disappeared off the face of the earth in a cave somewhere.

Galavantan.

And you've returned to London in the most surreal circumstances, haven't you?

I have, yeah, I was aware for a couple of weeks, I'm nice and sunbunned, and I've come back and London is very different indeed.

Now, if you live in the arse in a nowhere in England, if you live in a town or a village, you probably see a lot of people wandering around because, you know, village life is very different to city life.

You see the entirety of Piccadilly Circus, just completely bereft of people to see old Compton Street, completely bereft of people, the only people who are out are men taking pictures of how quiet it is.

Therefore, making the scene not as quiet as it should be. It's just men going around going, oh my god, it's so quiet. I'm going to take some pictures of this. It's so crazy.

I mean, you're right in the middle of it, right? Given you're in central London, does it must be really weird at the moment, like every street, choir, every street empty, a bit like 28 days later, I imagine.

It is very like 28 days later. I ran to the shop, because I hadn't got any shopping in, and I certainly didn't have enough toilet roll, but I did steal some from the aeroplane on the way back, which is good.

And I, yeah, so I was like, tumbling around and I sort of filled with stuff. And yeah, it was like 9pm last night. So what's that? A Tuesday, Monday night.

Usually just filled with tourists and people, and there was no one around, apart from the aforementioned men who seemed to find it, illuring to take pictures of a completely empty Piccadilly Circus at 9pm on a Monday.

It was just, it's just fascinating. It really is. It is, but I mean, it's, it's real for me, because I'm obviously opposite end of the spectrum at the moment. Japan's one of the few countries where things are kind of normal. And I don't, I's ridiculous.

Like I just saw an event the other day, the Olympic torch, the Olympic flames here at the moment. 50,000 people in Sendai queued up to see it, which probably wasn't a good idea, because it's not as though Japan is no cases.

I think it's, it's widely, what the opinion that's widely held at the moment is that Japan is kind of not doing a great job testing. The numbers are probably a lot worse than they are.

I don't want to get, like, I don't want to go down that road too much. I don't want to talk about all that. But there's a lot of mixed messages like some people say that because Japan is a low contact culture.

People don't hug, people don't kiss, people don't touch. Maybe they're not spreading the virus. And maybe because people wear masks, they're also could like, they're passing it on less often.

At the same time, there isn't a whole lot of testing going on. It's a poultry sum. I think the last time I looked, it was like 3000 tests or something ridiculous compared to other countries that have done tens of thousands of tests.

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