These days Naoki Kitamori finds himself spending much of his working hours watching Netflix or refining his putting technique at his office in Aoto, a riverside neighborhood of small factories and homes in the northeast of Tokyo.
The metal clangs and the buzz of industrial machinery that typically fill the alleys are mostly silent, replaced by the carefree chirping of birds.
“Things have been pretty slow,” says Kitamori, president of aluminum parts maker Sadokita Seiki K.K.