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.