The boys' undōkai (運動会, field day) has been postponed by two weeks and is now called a gakunen-betsu taiiku happyōkai (学年別体育発表会) or Presentation of Physical Education Separated by Grades. (Trust me, it sounds marginally better in Japanese.) What would normally be an all day affair under a blazing hot sun will now last about 30 minutes per grade. Win-win.
Japanese Pandemic Posters from 100 Years Ago
When it comes to pandemics, we humans should be able to say been there, done that, but our collective consciousness can be foggy. Adopting new habits of social distancing, mask wearing, and heightened hygiene might feel new to us, but these are things that our grandparents and great-grandparents also had to do when diseases spread.
The posters here are mostly from a pandemic handbook published when the Spanish flu was raging. I will translate the advice later.
How to Get into a Japanese University
This time last year I asked some students what the route to enter university was like. Interestingly enough, the first step for those not entering through the suisen, or recommendation system, was to buy a face mask in order to prevent getting sick before the all-too-important entrance exam, which is often make or break.
Mind you, this was pre-COVID.