Earlier this year the government announced an economic relief fund as part of measures to deal with the impact of COVID-19. Every resident in Japan was eligible to receive the ¥100,000 payment, but not everybody felt that they needed the money.
Trishit Banerjee, a chemistry masters student at Tohoku University, first moved to Sendai from Mumbai in 2015 to study. Currently on a scholarship program that means his tuition and living expenses are covered, he didn’t feel the financial pinch felt by others due to the pandemic.
“I didn’t really need extra cash to pump my wallet,” Banerjee says. “At that time I was reading how other students and people all over Japan were financially affected by this pandemic.”