I've been yearning and praying for months that something like this would happen and tonight, as i was taking my daily walk through the park close to my workplace, it finally happened!
Some older gentleman saw me walking without a mask and instead of staring, checking to see his mask is on tightly or even crossing to the other side of the road...he pulled down his own mask and for the first time in months, breathed God's air!
Very very small in the grand scheme, but after more than a year of disappointments, this was amazing!
"I'M FINE THANK YOU AND YOUUUUU"
I was there from 2012-2014. I taught both kids and adults. I gotta say, the ability to mindlessly follow authority has always been a thing over there, probably since they were a Confucian society for so long. Ask people, kids included, why Dokdo is important and you'll usually get a canned response: it's full of resources and natural gas so it's important for our country.
Followed by, teacher Japan bad.
When I visited Seoul a few years ago I was entertained by the solemn Dokdo propaganda video playing on the airport shuttle train, chastising Japan about how "The World Knows" that it's unequivocally Korea's territory.
There's zero equivalent pro-Takeshima propaganda in Japan if you don't dive into deep nationalist YouTube or somewhere. Haven't seen any equivalent of that in 30 years living here.