Key Points
- Aoi, a former television station employee, describes the drastic shift in media production during the pandemic, moving from location shoots to COVID-specific reporting and remote workflows.
- Mutsumi, a music student at the time, highlights the technical difficulties of online vocal lessons, specifically the struggle with audio latency during remote piano accompaniment.
- The pandemic served as a significant turning point for Aoi, who used the period of restricted movement to re-evaluate her career path and pursue graduate studies.
- Both speakers emphasize how digital tools like Instagram Live and online activism became essential for maintaining social connections and pursuing social causes like climate change.
Full Transcript (English)
Host (Mutsumi): Aoi, were you still a company employee during the peak of the pandemic?
Guest (Aoi): Yes, I was.
Host (Mutsumi): How did things change? Did it become completely remote?
Guest (Aoi): It changed drastically. At the time, I was at a TV station, and we were told we couldn’t have many people in the studio. We had to ask commentators and guests to stop coming in. All the location shoots, like going to restaurants to eat, were canceled. The programming shifted almost entirely to news. Even the production departments were reorganized into teams to interview doctors about COVID-19 countermeasures. It was a total overhaul.
Host (Mutsumi): I realized I don’t often talk with friends or colleagues about what we were actually doing during that time. I think it’s worth reflecting on. For me, I was a first-year university student in 2020. My high school graduation was very strange—only the graduates were allowed, no parents or juniors. We were all wearing masks during our entrance exams.
Guest (Aoi): That must have been a difficult timing. What about your university life?
Host (Mutsumi): I entered a music university, but I couldn’t actually go to the campus. Classes didn’t start until June and were mostly online. Since I was a vocal major, my singing lessons were remote. The biggest problem was the time lag. If the teacher played the piano and I sang along, the delay made it impossible to sync. I had to learn this weird skill of singing slightly “ahead” of the beat I was hearing so that it would sound right on the teacher’s end. I wondered if this was really what I was paying tuition for.
Guest (Aoi): I had a similar period of reflection. Around that time, I was diagnosed with rheumatism and needed to visit the hospital regularly. Because the nature of my work changed and I wasn’t out on location shoots, I was assigned to a special COVID-19 task force. This gave me more time at home. I started thinking about my future and realized that if I wanted to be effective in the long run, I needed to study more. That’s when I decided to apply for graduate school and eventually leave my job.
Host (Mutsumi): Since I couldn’t meet new people at university, I spent a lot of time on Instagram Live with my old high school friends. We would use filters and just talk. We even tried doing online “sessions” where we would sing together remotely. It’s something we never would have done if not for the pandemic.
Guest (Aoi): I also worked on a project called “Waraeba” (If You Laugh). We collaborated with high school students across Hokkaido who had missed out on their school festivals and graduations. We created a song and a music video together to give them a way to make memories despite the restrictions.
Host (Mutsumi): It was also a time when online activism grew. I was involved in climate change movements. Usually, we would gather in front of the National Diet Building, but during the pandemic, we shifted to social media campaigns. We actually saw a huge increase in participation because it was easier for people to join by just using a hashtag from home. The pandemic forced us to focus on ourselves, but it also opened our eyes to structural issues in society.
Guest (Aoi): It really was a milestone that changed how many of us view our lives and careers. We’d love to hear from the viewers—what were you doing during those years?
