osama donya is in tokyo he's the washington post spirit chief there welcome to t.w. why does the message about social distancing not seem to be getting through to people at. well so far japan hasn't seen the kind of excel aeration in coronavirus cases that we've seen in so many other countries many european countries in the u.s. . so people hadn't felt the coronavirus was as much of a threat the government had taken a fairly soft line up until now it hadn't been doing making a lot of recommendations it did coast schools but that was about it people were still commuting and as you said last week it was incredible everybody was how on the streets how nami cherry blossom viewing very popular there were there was an indoor martial arts event where thousands of people gathered in a stadium there were thousands of people to see the olympic torch north of tokyo it was as though nothing was happening and compared to the sort of scenes we saw we've seen in europe and in the us it was pretty incredible for us it was a slight sense of unreality and in the last few days i'm afra