About this time a year ago, I was walking around the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno Park with my friend Akira and we were discussing my inability to spend time alone. It was February 2020. Coronavirus was this unthreatening disease in China and anyone who was actually worried about it was massively overreacting. Akira was wearing a mask as we walked around, which I remember thinking was completely ridiculous. Anyway, we were talking about my need to be in constant communication with other people and my irrational fear of being left alone to my own devices. Akira posed the purely hypothetical question of what I would do if I had to spend a fixed amount of time completely alone. I told him that was obviously something I would never have to do because when would I ever be in a situation where I was required to spend a significant amount of time on my own with no way of venturing into the outside world? Never, I said with foolish conviction.

Enter the pandemic.

So I left Japan in December and now I’m re-entering Japan and fourteen long days of isolation stretch out before me. Clearly I am a new woman because I am actually having a blast. Firstly, in line with the new-year-new-me mantra I’m currently pushing, I board the flight feeling uncharacteristically calm, which is a sentiment I’m not sure I’ve experienced since about 2018. As opposed to last year, there are no tears and certainly no panic attacks. (That’s called growth, ladies!)

Nevertheless, getting back into Japan requires jumping through some fairly painful hoops. Let’s start with Heathrow. At 8 o’clock in the morning I am relieved to discover I don’t have to stick any swabs into my tonsils for an uncomfortable length of time, as per the NHS covid test I endured at Woodgreen Leisure Centre the week before. I am happy about this because I find gagging in front of people hugely embarrassing. The LAMP test appears to just be five seconds per nostril. The relief is momentary. “So what do you do in Japan?” the nurse asks me as she stabs me hard in the left nostril. The swab goes in perpendicular to my face and oh my god the pain is like no other. I don’t answer her question and instead I try (and fail) not to cry. She then does my right nostril and I wonder if she hates me and is intentionally causing me permanent nasal damage. I casually ask if this amount of pain is normal and she responds with a stern yes.

I make it on the plane after a very disappointing chicken Caesar baguette from Pret made marginally better by a chocolate chunk cookie. (When did they stop selling salmon and avocado pittas?) There are fifteen people on the plane, which makes for a spacious ride. We do ask but they say we can’t sit in first class and I think this is really mean of them. Nevertheless, I befriend the cabin attendant and he brings me more than my fair share of mini gin and tonics, which I pretend to drink but instead shove in my bag as he walks away. He tells me he’s flown to Japan over 200 times and it’s his dream to live there. Then he asks me what my job is and, if I don’t mind him asking, how much do I make per month? I don’t actually mind him asking so I tell him and he nods. He says he’s just done his TEFL but doesn’t have a degree and I say I haven’t done TEFL but I do have a degree and it kind of feels a bit like a competition, like we’re both sizing each other up and I don’t really like it. He asks if I’ve read The Japanese Mind and I say I haven’t, to which he says it’s one of his favourites and all I can respond is: “Oh, nice.”

The covid test as I arrive in Japan is pain-free but I still find it uncomfortable. I’m given a test tube and asked to spit into it. According to the laminated posters in front of me, the ideal spit should be clear and look like a neat pool of water coming up to the red line. There are pictures of bubbly spit, not enough spit, bloody spit and spit with food in it. These pictures all have a big red cross next to them. I spit into a funnel that trickles into the test tube. It’s coming out very bubbly. Of course, I’ve also just eaten a chocolate biscuit because I didn’t know any of this was happening. I muster all the spit I’ve got in me. So far it’s chocolatey and bubbly and nowhere near the red line.

It takes a while but we get there and the test is negative so I follow a woman holding a big yellow sign. We all collect our luggage and she asks if anyone needs to use the ATM. I say hai onegaishimasu and she asks if anyone needs to use the toilets and I say hai onegaishimasu. I don’t know if she doesn’t hear me or if I’ve been saying yes please incorrectly for the better part of a year but she ushers us quickly past the ATM and the toilets, and onto a bus waiting outside. I climb aboard with a full bladder and an empty purse. None of this phases me though, because I am still a new woman and I am still very weirdly relaxed.

I’m handed a stack of paper on entry to the hotel with a lot of information in Japanese about apps I need to download and information I need to register. I read it in bed once I’m in my hotel room, not really understanding much of it and feeling slightly concerned by the briefly mentioned six month prison sentence, ¥500,000 fine and revocation of my visa should I provide any false information.

I stay in bed for the rest of the day because there isn’t really anything else to do. I eat one of the twirls that Granny Sue gave me before the flight and I sip Pukka night time tea from a paper cup. My plan to lie in on Friday is unfortunately interrupted at six thirty in the morning by an ear-piercingly loud tannoy in my hotel room telling me to take my temperature and report it online using the QR code in the big stack of paper. The tannoy screams at me an hour or so later to tell me breakfast has arrived, which is watery scrambled eggs drizzled in ketchup in a paper cupcake case, three very unappetising mini sausages, some heavily dressed salad and rice. I’m hungry so I pick at the rice and the salad. I don’t eat the eggs or the sausages; luckily I’ve brought some eggs in my suitcase that are more to my liking, those of the creme kind.

The second day trickles slowly by. I take a long bath and put on what I like to call my day pyjamas, which are just my pyjama bottoms and a clean T-shirt. I watch TV, I study Japanese for about ten minutes, and I try to learn the lyrics to Despacito. The tannoy blares out an announcement eight times a day; each time in Japanese twice, then in English twice. It’s very Orwellian and about 1000 decibels louder than it needs to be.

I sleep badly and the tannoy wakes me up at six thirty on Saturday morning. I’m starting to really hate the tannoy. I have a headache all morning. At about nine o’clock I get a Facebook message from a boy I met on a night out in the student union two years ago. Now then Annabel, the message starts. What are we saying? It’s midnight in England and I haven’t heard from this boy since the night I met him. He asks me if I’m in London and I tell him that I am definitely not. We message for almost an hour in which time he asks me about Japan, talks about his job as a journalist, and suggests we call whilst I’m in quarantine. I phone my friend Courtney who was there the night I met this boy. She’s on the beach in Sydney with her housemate and I read the conversation out to them. By the time I get to the bottom, he’s sent me 10 screenshots of songs he thinks I’d like, which surprises me seeing as we don’t know each other. It gets to 1am (his time) and he says he needs to head off but he’d like to talk to me more about Japan. I send him the link to my blog and tell him that a call might be strange, again reiterating that we don’t know each other. The conversation ends, I add him on LinkedIn and close my laptop. I eat another twirl and nap for most of the day.

They let me out of the hotel at 4pm on Sunday and I take a taxi to my AirBnB in Kamata, in south-east Tokyo. Akira comes over with some groceries, seeing as I’m still not allowed out the house, and for the next few days I live off a steady diet of beans on toast and spaghetti with tomato sauce, which doesn’t scream variety but absolutely trumps the gluey rice and soggy vegetable bento boxes served up at the hotel. The following week is a blur of Bridgerton episodes, flat searching, and not being able to sleep at night because I am convinced every creak in the corridor is a murderer coming to get me. My sleep schedule is messed up to say the least, which I blame on the jet lag, though it’s been a week now so really my inclination to lie in bed all day and achieve very little is probably more at fault. My journalist pen pal from the night in the student union is in touch daily, providing very complimentary feedback on my blog posts. I tell him I didn’t love the songs he recommended and he asks if there are any Japanese songs I like. I send him one and a few hours later, he sends me a video of himself playing bass over the top of it. I ask him if this is normal behaviour for him and he says yes. I send him another song and by the time I wake up, he’s played me another cover, this time on the drums. I think he’s in love with me.

It snows on Thursday, which makes my freezing cold flat feel even more freezing and even more cold. I make myself beans on toast and I feel proud of myself for being productive. At the end of the day, I find a small window in the kitchen blowing cold air inside that has likely been open for the whole time I’ve been here.

A few more days go by. I can’t remember my last shower and underwear isn’t a concept I believe in anymore. But then, on that second Saturday, something strange happens. I wake up at nine o’clock and instead of staring at the ceiling and scrolling through Instagram for at least two hours, I actually get up. I pull back the curtains and real daylight pours in. The sky is blue and the sun is shining. I take a shower and I realise that from the tiny bathroom window I can be standing in the shower, yet look out and see a snowy peak of Mount Fuji. I run the hot water for much longer than I should and keep staring out the window, before I eventually get out and put two loads of washing on. I tidy the flat and I open up a Japanese textbook. I learn how to say ‘Is it alright if I eat this?’ (kore wa tabete ii desu ka?) and ‘Do you have plans next Saturday?’ (raishuu no doyoubi yotei arimasu ka?) and I pace the corridor of my AirBnB repeating these phrases to myself, imagining situations where I’m actually allowed out of the house and I can say these to people and they’ll be impressed. I do some house-hunting and I update my CV. At some point it gets dark outside, and I actually feel tired and also not at all depressed. I guess there’s something to be said for getting out of bed in the morning.

A few more days pass. I watch the entirety of It’s A Sin in one day and for anyone who hasn’t watched it, do. Then I’m not sure what to do with myself so I start watching Celebs Go Dating: The Mansion, which is as awful as it sounds. I turn it off at the first ad break and give my CV a few more tweaks.

So now it’s Wednesday night and tomorrow is my release day. I’ve done it. I’ve (almost) spent two weeks alone and it has been fine. Tomorrow I will be viewing an apartment and then I am going to eat a bowl of ramen and go drinking with my work friends.

The End.

P.S. For the more scrutinous readers, I am sorry that there was no final blog of 2020 as promised in the last post. I was planning on writing something at the airport before I came home about the life lessons I learned in 2020 and how I’ve grown as a person and all that. But actually I went out the night before my flight, I was hungover and I neither wanted to nor had much reason to smugly impart wisdom unto others. So I’ve probably done you a favour. Anyway, thanks for reading as always.