Christmas in quarantine

Almost finished the first half of my quarantine in my hotel room with a view overlooking Yokohama Bay. Each morning I open the curtains to see a different dawn and through the day new cruise liners and ships sail into the harbour across dark blue waters. There are factory chimneys in the near distance emitting elongated plumes of smoke that look static, like a collage cut-out stuck on the sky. At night, city lights glow and glimmer over vast unfamiliar terrain looking like an alien city.

‘Please report your daily health condition’ my app says. ‘Do you or a family member living with you currently have a temperature of 37.5°C (99.5°F) of higher? Please take the temperature if you do not know it.’

‘No.’

‘Thank you for responding.’

The hotel gave us a thermometer when we arrived and each day you have to enter your temperature into an app, otherwise a person calls you and waits for you take your temperature, awkwardly hanging on the line for the bleep bleep bleep of my reading. 

Every day I get two calls through my government covid monitoring app, either from a bot or a real person. The bot simply asks you to blink and records your face for 30 seconds. Initially, I stood still for these mug shots, but now I wink and blow kisses at the bot. It doesn’t seem to mind or interfere with its work. When I got a real person, I was gazing out across Yokohama Bay at night and the caller screen was blank even though there was a woman on the other end checking on my condition. She was probably trained to study whether I “looked ill” from our one-way video call. We had a nice chat and I showed her the view outside my window and she said it was キレイですねー　(very beautiful indeed, I mean, then I was probably hindering her work). 

She asked how I was feeling, and I said I felt really sad because I was having to quarantine for the whole 14-day period because someone on my flight had omicron. I just wanted to go home and see my Obaachan whom I hadn’t seen in over two years. My blank screen caller really did sound sorry for me and made exasperated noises of concern.

‘I actually meant how do you feel physically; do you have a fever or a new cough?’

‘No.’

‘Thank you for giving me your time.’

The next real person called me on Christmas Day and when she hung up, she said a cheery ‘Merry Christmas!’ and that was quite cute.

//

I’ve had to stop my newly reset iPhone from creating “memories” with my photos because the albums were very sad. It kept cycling through limited snaps of the plane, meal boxes and the view from my window. It was like a dystopia where I'd spent my entire life in quarantine.

The meals are very good. Can’t complain about the three meals a day the hotel staff deliver and hang from my doorknob. The boxes get progressively nicer as the day goes on which is better than the reverse. I look forward to the yoghurt pot at breakfast (blueberry is the best), though not a fan of the vacuum-packed bread rolls like the ones you get on aeroplanes. Lunch and dinner you get an assortment of things, always including rice and some meat, fish and veg. The presentation is like a bento box with different compartments for different dishes, so that the flavours stay separate and clean. 

The most tragic thing about this quarantine is that there is no booze. No alcohol on the premises! Agh. Why had I brought tins of biscuits to give as gifts to the neighbours when I should have packed tinnies? You can’t have Christmas without a drink. I felt like I’d been checked into rehab. 

Hark! There was a Christmas miracle. My aunt Mariko (angel) sent me a festive selection of Asahi beers which arrived on Christmas Eve! Just in time for dinner and before a surprise display of fireworks that went off outside my window. Praise be. I had a PCR test and the results came back negative. Hallelujah. 

On Christmas Day my lunch box contained a piece of roast chicken and dinner included a slice of chocolate roulade affixed with a figurine of Santa Claus playing the trombone. The TV was showing Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence – with a storyline I couldn't fathom – but seeing David Bowie and Ryuichi Sakamoto playing side by side as massive pop stars of their era felt like a blessing. Also, that hauntingly elegant score. I had calls with family in Orkney and Aidan’s lot in Northumberland, who were all preparing feasts to be had later in the day. Bang whizz pop! Gorgeous fireworks were set off again outside my window and I had a special Christmastime indeed.

I Slept

I slept. 

Woke up to a colourful dawn of pink grapefruit hues across Yokohama Bay. There is a rainbow coloured ferris wheel and a theme park outside my hotel window. The spiral rollercoaster with tiny people on it – probably shrieking in excitement – is the antithesis of what I’m like in my compartment.

I did 45 minutes of Yoga with Adriene. I said 'hello' to Benji the dog and on-screen yoga companion – the first time I’d heard my voice all day, which was quite a surprise. 

Played my Gameboy in bed (dusted off for this trip). I could only find one cartridge that was already inserted. In my other life, I am a novice Pokémon trainer named Yellow with a Pikachu nicknamed ROLOCHU on the way to Veridian City.

I slept more.

To be pulled out of sleep aggressively by the ringing telephone. It was hotel reception, they were connecting me to the ward officials of the town where my Obaachan lives.

‘A fellow passenger on your plane has tested positive for omicron. You will now have to do the full 14-day quarantine at a government designated hotel.’

Oh no! I knew this was likely to happen coming from virus riddled London, but still I was aghast. I asked her whether the whole plane was being put under extended quarantine? The ward official said no, only passengers who came in close contact with the infected person. (I must’ve been sat close to them! What bad luck.) They told me I would be moved to a new hotel at the end of my 6 days here, and that because this was going to be a longer stay than expected I could order items such as pants online.

Then I began to cry because I’d come all this way to spend お正月(New Years) with my grandmother and now I was going to have to miss that too! Was there no way if I tested negative to complete my isolation in her house instead? She sounded sorry for me, but said I had to remain in a government hotel for the full 14 days, ‘What if you were to pass the virus on to your Obaachan?’

I let the news sink in for the rest of the day. I don’t remember what I did. All I know is I talked to my loving friends who all sympathetically suffered alongside me. 

//

The next day I woke up thinking it was Christmas Eve, but I was a day ahead of myself. 

I started to unpack my suitcase and took out my portable fairy lights – thank god I brought decorations to brighten the place up a bit – and a cardboard cut-out of a wintry tree house with woodland creatures, which I could assemble as a Christmas activity. I placed all my belongings on the racks and shelves, hiding the hotel toiletries and instruction manuals in the bin liner they gave me for my used linens, shoving it all under the bed.

Jumped around to a hip hop work-out video on my travel yoga mat then danced to Charli XCX.

Still getting used to the small kettle the hotel has provided, as it’s more like a hot water pot. The water remains warm a long time after it’s been boiled and there’s a button you press down to release the steam to humidify the room.

Things I’m glad I brought with me for hotel quarantine:

1. Tin mug. The ‘return to Japan support group’ on Facebook were correct, the cups provided are too small and you can’t have a proper brew in them.

2. Tea bags. They provide small sachets of instant coffee but that’s no fun, nor does it help pass the long stretches of time.

Basically, the elements that make a good cup of tea.

Yokohama Bay (quarantine hotel)

At APA Hotel & Resort Yokohama Bay Tower, not slept in the bed yet. A totally tiny room with a beautiful view of the glittering lights of Yokohama. 

My destination for the next six days of quarantine, before, hopefully (pray for me because if someone on my flight tests positive for covid then we all get locked up for the entire fourteen-day quarantine duration) I get to move to Obaachan’s house to finish off my time there. At least then I’ll be able to spend New Year’s with the family. 

Obaachan welled up with tired tears of joy when I called her from my hotel room; her shoulders dropped with a sense of relief. She didn’t think I’d be let in and fair enough, I’ve come from omicron infested London. 

I tested three hours before boarding with a Fit2Fly PCR to get the certificate – Japanese authorities love certificates. 

I was standing in line with other Brits who wanted to go abroad, one wrinkly man in a polo shirt and a blue-eyed stare kept banging on about how he had paid £119 for the privilege.

‘They told me come back here for 12:45 – it’s 12:40 now – and when it’s 12:45, on the dot,’ he pulled down his mask every time he addressed us for emphasis ‘I’m marching back in there. It’s bloody chaos, Terminal 2 is.’

A kid whose flight was boarding soon, politely asked us if he could jump the queue and this old man said, ‘Where you off to son?’

‘Zimbabwe,’ replied the clipped accent. 

‘Bloody hell.’

I received my negative test result (yes!) as check-in opened, where I also handed over various other documents. Tellingly, everyone in the JAL queue whipped out plastic sheets containing their physical pieces of paper to get into the country. One of which is a Written Pledge, which waives your rights to privacy if you bring covid into the country. For Japanese nationals (that’s me) their family members can be named and shamed i.e. publicised to the media, if their relative unknowingly brings in the virus in. For a foreign national your visa status can be revoked, also you could be put into detention. So much for herd immunity.

Nevertheless, I was allowed on the flight. The cabin attendants asked us all politely to keep our masks on and refrain from talking. I thought, damn right. Mask up and shut up. Stop the virus. I ate my meal and covered my head with a blanket and slept most of the way. Super tired from the stress of it all. The past weeks had been filled with waiting for a single line to appear on LFTs, cancelling plans, booking scarce PCRs, feeling groggy and foggy from the booster and watching friends drop like flies. 

We arrived in Japan; the red sun was setting. Shadows were stark and long. Uniformed people drove boxy vehicles around the plane for inspection. I couldn’t believe while looking out through my small porthole window that I could see Mt. Fuji in the distance, emblematic, behind the Tokyo skyline. I had landed!

I got tested at Haneda airport again. Currently Japan’s borders are closed to foreign nationals, so everyone there had to be on a Japanese passport or an exceptional visa. There were lines and lines of us being corralled from one part of the airport to another. I downloaded apps via QR code, printed and signed documents. Ticked checkboxes, removed my mask for facial recognition, scanned my passport. Filled out a medical assessment questionnaire. Got given a green tag to attach around my wrist, so I didn’t stray from the flock. Spat into a vial for the covid test. Staff checked my phone had the government apps installed and explained how to use them. 

I stood and queued and sat in front of bureaucrats behind plastic safety screens, who scribbled on my paperwork and directed me to go stand somewhere else. I waited about six hours from disembarkation to receiving my negative test results, phew. Those of us who had travelled on the same aeroplane got sat on socially distanced seats to wait for a bus to take us to our designated government-paid hotel. Destination unknown until we got there. A woman with two children sat behind me said to the bus inspector, ‘Why can’t you tell us where we’re going? I’m honestly scared.’ The tubby man apologised profusely and said he didn’t know why, but rules were rules.

I switched on my Google live location and sent it to my aunt Mariko, so she could track where I was going. Luckily, it was only a half hour drive from the airport and we pulled into Yokohama, a scenic coastal city. We were let off the bus in small cohorts. We sanitized our hands, got more QR codes and a thermometer to verify our daily temperature. I was given a non-smoking room and handed a very much desired bag of food and sent up in a lift to my room. 

I have a king-sized bed that’s more than half the room’s width and a TV that’s almost as large. I have a small writing desk and an excess of mirrors. Even though the TV and bed dominate, when I open the curtains what do I see? A most elegant view of Yokohama Bay, with a lit up cruise ship docked in its placid waters. Not bad at all to hunker down in over Christmas.