The announcement of a second state of emergency in January drew a sigh of exasperation from workers in the affected city centers, but not in the way you probably think. It wasn’t working in a physical space many were missing, but the countless office supplies that hold such spaces together.
"I miss my desk drawer and my supply of anime-themed paper clips," Satoko Kanzaki tells The Japan Times during an online interview.
Kanzaki is an office manager at a Tokyo-based tech company. Her firm has been working remotely since March 2020 and, like many of her colleagues, Kanzaki shifted to online meetings and working from her living room.