SU2MM
Well, to update on the situation, I am happy to say that I am now back home in Osaka. I am very happy to be home and the following is really minor gripes in comparison to that, but I will write a bit anyways.
Thankfully my test on the 27th was negative and I could take the flight as planned on the 29th. It seems like my university is accepting that I worked remotely for those two weeks (although the final decision is still not clear, Japanese bureaucracy is so much fun…). In my continued streak of amazing luck my plane from Spain was delayed and I almost didn’t make it to the connecting flight in Paris. The next plane to Japan would have been next day, so even though the airline would cover everything, it would have brought more complications. The plane arrived 15 minutes before the plane for Osaka was planned to depart and I ran the distance that was supposed to take 30 minutes in 10. Turns out that the second plane was 30 minutes delayed as well, luckily (maybe they were waiting for people, not entirely clear to me, the cabin attendants in the first plane could not say). Of course this means that my luggage didn’t make it, should get it in a couple of days.
It is still unclear how much of my hotel fees the health insurance will cover, although the maximum is apparently 10 days. In principle this is based on me having to isolate, not that I couldn’t go back to Japan I think. In Spain they don’t actually have any isolation rules, hopefully this is not a problem (so far it seems like it isn’t, but who knows). If they can at last cover a bit more than half it would not be terrible economically and I’ll also survive if they cover nothing, but it will really suck and it’s a good chunk of saved up money just gone (postdoc salaries are not exactly amazing).
But the important thing is that I am home. I hadn’t left Japan in 2 and a half years due to the Corona situation and it was nice to see my family (the conference was good too, but not the most important part), but yeah, I will probably not want to leave Japan again as long as testing is required. Beforehand I knew the risk as an abstract, now I know firsthand and it hits harder once you’ve been stuck for two weeks in a hotel.
