Hector Martin

That's one place, and was that photo taken during the state of emergency or after? I can tell you plenty of places are closed, some temporarily, some permanently, and many others had reduced hours. Things are slowly becoming more normal now.

I was at a dollar store today and they were looking social distancing advice on the speakers, and the checkout lines had spots marked every 2m or so. Went to two sushi restaurants recently, one wasn't using the conveyor belt at all, the other was using plastic lids.

This is all after the state of emergency was lifted. I can't tell you much about before because I was staying the hell home as were most people, but the one time I had to leave for some necessary bureaucracy the trains were at like 20% of normal usage.

Since I had gone all the way there at the time I figured I'd grab takeout at a place I particularly liked, but no dice: it was closed. Also the supermarket nearest to where I live was operating on reduced hours (closing 10PM, previously was 24h, now it's back again).

Also, I've had like 5 concerts or large events I had tickets to be cancelled or postponed multiple times now. I've myself had to arrange to cancel an event I was staff at and then we made it an online streaming event instead.

A friend turned an event she was running into a friends-only one (because she couldn't get the venue fee refunded, might as well use it), so it was like 10 of us in a decently large live venue. Point is, social distancing may not be legally mandatory, but people *are doing it*.

Also I’ve seen plenty of pics w people masked but crowded on mass transit . The article was touting the benefits of not talking as is custom in Japan as opposed to how we shout to each other in the subway and spray virus.