Apologies for not replying sooner. It's been a "taxing" week (pun fully intended), and it looks like I'll have to go on in to the tax office to sort out how to handle details.
The general feeling I get from Japan is not the fear and grief that I get from America and Europe, where I sent out 14 Christmas cards and did not get any back at all until mid-February, and then they started with a list of friends passing on. Until now I could expect to hear back from all of them. Oh wait, one exception: a Vietnamese friend in Tennessee who just e-mails greetings each year. What I see is resignation. In fact, it makes me wonder if the Far East has more philosophical resilience than the West. The people I talk to in Japan seem to be taking the setbacks in stride. The one exception is the young. A lot of them (not all) seem to be having a very hard time. I've seen a number of cases of dyslexia appear among the boys, which I had never seen before in Japan. In general, they went from hyperactivity, which had been becoming a problem, to total lack of interest in anything. I would sing a song for them to sing along, and my grade school students would just sit and stare. And then they all dropped out, so now I have a few adult students and one profoundly dyslexic teenage boy student who seems psychologically healthy, at least in comparison with others. Crimes by younger people seem to be on the rise too. Indeed, I think the impact here is enormous, but people just don't express it. I imagine things will evolve similarly in Singapore. Stay in touch and let me know how it goes. We can probably comiserate more meaningfully than between the Far East and the West.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2023-03-09 08:35 am (UTC)The general feeling I get from Japan is not the fear and grief that I get from America and Europe, where I sent out 14 Christmas cards and did not get any back at all until mid-February, and then they started with a list of friends passing on. Until now I could expect to hear back from all of them. Oh wait, one exception: a Vietnamese friend in Tennessee who just e-mails greetings each year. What I see is resignation. In fact, it makes me wonder if the Far East has more philosophical resilience than the West. The people I talk to in Japan seem to be taking the setbacks in stride. The one exception is the young. A lot of them (not all) seem to be having a very hard time. I've seen a number of cases of dyslexia appear among the boys, which I had never seen before in Japan. In general, they went from hyperactivity, which had been becoming a problem, to total lack of interest in anything. I would sing a song for them to sing along, and my grade school students would just sit and stare. And then they all dropped out, so now I have a few adult students and one profoundly dyslexic teenage boy student who seems psychologically healthy, at least in comparison with others. Crimes by younger people seem to be on the rise too.
Indeed, I think the impact here is enormous, but people just don't express it.
I imagine things will evolve similarly in Singapore.
Stay in touch and let me know how it goes. We can probably comiserate more meaningfully than between the Far East and the West.