Swine flu reaches Tokyo

The Japanese press is reporting that the Tokyo area now has its first confirmed swine flu case – a high school student in Hachioji who recently returned from a trip to the United States. Given her travel history, it is likely that she was infected while outside of Japan, and that it is not related to the current outbreak in Kobe/Osaka.

Update: Here’s an article in English that mentions the Tokyo flu case.

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17 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - May 20, 2009 at 9:16 pm

Categories: General Japan Tags: swine flu

Richard

The suburb of Hachioji-shi is not exactly Tokyo. It’s like a 40-minute train ride away from anything closely resembling a city.

Rated-R

Hachioji is more of a part of Tokyo than Nii-jima.

Richard

Darin & Rated-R:

Stand at the top of the tallest building in Hachioji (just 7 or 8 stories) and on a very clear day you might be able to make out the Tokyo skyline. Tokyo can draw its municipal borders however it wants, of course, but Hachioji-shi is just a charming little suburb on the distant outskirts. Swine Flu has not so much “hit” Tokyo as it has “grazed” it.

Darin

@Richard

We’re all impressed with your ability to speak in a condescending tone about things in Japan as evidence that you’re here and therefore instantly know what you’re talking about.

But you’re going to have to face the fact that yes, Hachioji is a suburban area of Tokyo, but it is not a suburb like Chiba for example, but actually part of Tokyo.

“Tokyo can draw its municipal borders however it wants…”

It can, and does draw it’s borders how it wants. It’s borders include Hachioji no matter how much it bothers you, that’s the fact of the matter.

And really, if you could play this out just one more step, you would understand why this is actually news just as much as if there was someone even further away from your definition of Tokyo, in another bed town like Ichihara in Chiba, who had come down with the flu. Most everyone living in Hachioji commutes in crowded trains to Tokyo for work every day. They cough in that train, and now we have a few hundred sick people, who then cough in another train, and now we have a few thousand sick people.

Regardless of how well you can see a skyline from the tallest building in Hachioji, a confirmed case there is big news because it is very well connected to the center of Tokyo, as surrounding communities of big cities always are.
Richard

Calm down, Darin. Deep breaths.

Tokyo is connected by rail to every other metropolitan area on Honshu. So of course an infection in one area is likely to spread to the capital.

I hope you are not swept up in the swine flu panic and simply indignant that “someone is wrong on the internet.”

Lots of people are on edge right now, especially in germ-phobic Japan. Washed your hands thoroughly after going out in public, try not to french-kiss anyone with a hacking cough and you’ll probably be fine.
Darin

Actually I think the paranoia is ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as the claim that Hachioji isn’t part of Tokyo

http://www.chirimotsumoreba.net Jordan

Yeah, its a 40 minute train ride that people take every day to commute to work in… you guessed it… Tokyo. Don’t be silly.

http://www.chirimotsumoreba.net Jordan

Let’s also not forget that Hachioji is a part of Tokyo-to. So yeah.. it’s in Tokyo. It’s more than likely already in the wards as well given the communicability of this strain of flu.
Richard

Here’s an analogy: at least half the folks that live in Newark, New Jersey commute to Manhattan to work, but if a case of the Black Plague was found in Newark, one wouldn’t report a NYC plague outbreak, right? Newark is closer to Manhattan than Hachioji is to downtown Tokyo. It’s just a question of how widely the borders are drawn.

The person who caught the swine flu was a high school girl whose “commute” was to the local Hachioji high school. A school which is now closed.

I have to start investing in companies that make hand sanitizer and surgical masks, this flu scare could make me a fortune!

http://www.japanprobe.com James

The analogy doesn’t quite work because Newark is in New Jersey. Hachioji is in 東京都.

I used “Tokyo” because it is within 東京都 and the Japanese media has been using “東京都” in its headlines. If we were talking about a distant island that happens to be under the administrative control of Tokyo, I would make more of a distinction, but Hachioji is close enough to the main wards of the city that I didn’t see a problem using “Tokyo” in the headline. I used the wording “Tokyo area” in the post itself because I didn’t see any news about it being within the special wards.

Also, I think I heard on the news that the girl and her infected classmate both attend a school in Kawasaki, not Hachioji.
Richard

I agree, but the difference is just borders. The actual proximity is similar.

I am sorry I have offended many cartographically-inclined posters here. And while this back-and-forth is fun for a while, I should relent.

Hachioji-shi is definitely part of Tokyo-to. Both the Keio and JR lines make regular stops there. Swine flu appearing in Hachioji significantly increases the chance of it spreading into more populous areas downtown. I dispute none of these things.

In my original post I hoped I could assuage the fears of those who were not familiar with the greater Tokyo area. Hachioji is quite far from downtown.

If someone keeled over from swine flu in the middle of Shinjuku station I might be panicking more. But everyone is free to worry as much as they like.

binbiru

Yahoo Japan says she went to New york.
Darin

@Richard

Take it up with the Japanese language. Look at the headline:

都内で初の感染例　女子高校生、渡航歴あり　新型インフルエンザ

The friggin’ first word is “Inside-Tokyo”
morphine

八王子 is a slum. I’d be more worried about the STDs the high school girls there have than swine flu.

failb0t

You, sir, have no idea what you’re talking about.
http://www.zdwonline.de Haf

Obviously you have some… “experience”. May I have your adress? I’d like to forward it to the police, just in case…

http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com Brian

I’m not sure where else to post this, but your readers might be interested in this, so maybe it might merit a post. There’s a swine flu panic growing among foreign English teachers here. An American teacher was found to have it, so all the members of her cram school orientation group were quarantined. A few of them have blogs, and have been keeping the outside world posted. Looks like they’re comfortable, but the whole thing is pretty half-assed and thrown together (delivery men come and go?). But now foreign teachers in public schools are getting asked questions about whether they’ve left the country recently (wouldn’t they have noticed) or whether they’ve been to certain spots of the country. Here are some updates on the situation:

http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2009/05/some-updates-on-english-teachers.html

http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2009/05/more-on-those-english-teachers.html

http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2009/05/david-of-staypuffnet-is-swine-flu.html

A cram school has closed its doors until early June b/c of fears of the disease. And a local university has said that teachers arriving from Japan, the US, and a few other countries will be required to spend a week in quarantine.
http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2009/05/one-local-university-vigilant-in-face.html

Swine flu reaches Tokyo

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