I consider myself a Japanophile. In 2018 I visited Japan for the first time after years of anticipation. I had finally found the perfect travel companion in my boyfriend - who is just as positively obsessed with Japan as I am - since I’m not one to travel solo, unless it’s for work purposes. In the first week we arrived we already agreed that after this trip we would come back to Japan as soon as we could. And this year we made it back, in March, right in the middle of the global COVID-19 outbreak. We hesitated for a long time if we should travel at all, but the situation in Japan seemed fairly mild and under control, except for big events and most museums everything was still in operation. At the same time the situation in Europe was getting worse, so we felt it might be even better to escape to Japan than to stay in The Netherlands, where we might go under lockdown, which had just happened in Italy.
