When I heard the news that major Japanese corporations were asking their employees to work from home while their children were simultaneously out of school for weeks, I imagined working mothers I know sitting at their cluttered kitchen tables under fluorescent lights, tapping away at their laptops, the television blaring the children's anime shows a few feet away and the kids themselves constantly interrupting for food and attention.
I could picture husbands plopped cross-legged on the bed in the next room fielding phone calls, using their briefcases as makeshift laptop stands, while outside the window cherry blossoms beckon. Every few hours one or the other would escape to the local Starbucks, now packed with fellow remote-work refugees.
