好英语网紧急状态下的东京：夜生活仍在继续
TOKYO — It was a scene of normalcy, something friends in New York or London or San Francisco can only conjure in memory: a man and a woman, out for a drink.
东京——这本是稀松平常的一幕，但对于纽约、伦敦或旧金山的朋友来说已经成为回忆：一男一女，出门喝一杯。
Tokyo had already been in a coronavirus state of emergency for more than a week. But through the windows of a narrow restaurant in Roppongi, a popular nightlife district in central Tokyo, I could see them sipping from large beer steins, chatting in non-social distancing proximity.
东京处于冠状病毒紧急状态已经超过一周时间了。但透过东京市中心大受欢迎的夜生活区六本木一家逼仄餐厅的窗户，我能看到人们喝着大杯啤酒，在没有保持社交距离的亲密中畅聊。
Several other patrons waited, face masks pulled down under their chins, while cooks served up battered octopus balls.
几位老顾客在等餐，厨师们端上章鱼烧时，他们把口罩拉到下巴上。
周五，在东京新宿站附近用餐的人。东京都知事要求人们晚上不要外出，但称餐馆和酒吧可以营业到晚上8点。
Nobody was breaking any laws: Even Japan’s new state of emergency empowers governors only to request that people stay home and that businesses close. The Tokyo governor has asked people to refrain from going out at night, but said restaurants and bars may stay open until 8 p.m., prompting macabre jokes about the virus’s nocturnal habits.
这些都没有违反任何法律：甚至日本刚宣布的紧急状态也只允许知事们要求民众待在家里，企业停工。东京都知事要求人们晚上不要外出，但说餐馆和酒吧可以营业到晚上8点，这引来了病毒有夜行习惯的恐怖笑话。
Tokyo is a place where people follow rules. They wait for green lights to cross streets. In subway stations, they board escalators single file.
东京人都遵守规则。他们等绿灯过马路。在地铁站，他们在自动扶梯上站成单列。
But there is always room for subversion. On my normal route to work, I pass an alley book-ended by “no smoking” signs, always crowded with smokers. Tokyo’s cacophonous (and alcohol-soaked) nightlife caters to employees seeking an escape from days conforming to Japan’s hierarchical work culture. Even under the threat of a deadly virus, people don’t relinquish these outlets easily.
但规则总有被颠覆的空间。在我的日常通勤路上，会经过一条巷子，巷尾贴着“禁止吸烟”的标志，但那里总是挤满了吸烟者。东京喧闹（和浸透着酒精）的夜生活迎合了那些想要逃离日本等级森严的职场文化的员工们。即使是在致命病毒的威胁下，人们也不愿轻易放弃这些减压出口。
Some social distancing is also built in to the culture. We bow rather than shake hands. Hugging is rare. And while the Western world debated whether face masks were needed, Japanese did what came naturally. Long before the coronavirus, especially during winter flu seasons, Tokyo’s trains were filled with faces shielded behind white masks.
保持一定社交距离本就融入了日本文化。我们鞠躬不握手。拥抱是罕见的。当西方世界还在争论是否有必要戴口罩时，日本人已经自然而然戴上了。早在冠状病毒出现之前，尤其是在冬季流感季节，东京的车厢里就挤满了戴着白色口罩的人。
That may partly explain why this city has seemed seduced by magical thinking, presuming we are immune when so many others around the world are not.
这可能部分解释了为什么这座城市似乎被奇迹式思维所诱惑，认定我们能免疫，而世界其他地方的许多人却不能。
Even a member of Parliament refused to do what was being asked; he was kicked out of his political party when he admitted he visited a so-called hostess bar in Tokyo after the state of emergency was declared.
甚至一名国会议员也拒绝遵照要求行事；他承认在全国进入紧急状态后还光顾了东京一家所谓女招待酒吧，结果被自己所在的政党开除。
Some of the “resistance,” if you will, is rooted in this country’s work culture, where employees fear they will be deemed slackers if they don’t show up to work in person.
一些“反抗”——如果非要这么说的话——源于这个国家的职场文化，在这里，员工担心如果不亲自去上班，就会被视为偷懒。
On Friday, the first day of the government’s expanded state of emergency to cover all of Japan, a stream of people emerged from a subway station in my neighborhood, walking briskly into an office tower. At noontime a day earlier, office workers lined up to buy lunch at food trucks, chatting while seasoning their orders from communal condiment bottles.
周五，也就是政府将紧急状态扩大到全日本的第一天，一群人从我家附近的地铁站里出来，轻快地走进一座写字楼。一天前的中午，办公室职员们还在餐车前排队买午餐，一边聊天一边拿公用调料瓶给点的食物调味。
Tokyo may have been lulled into complacency during the weeks when Japan contained the coronavirus while avoiding economically devastating lockdowns.
几周来，日本在避免进行毁灭经济的封锁的情况下控制住了病毒，而东京可能因此有了一种自鸣得意。
Although schools have been closed and large events canceled since the beginning of March, much of life in this city — by most measures the world’s largest — continued as normal until early April. (The crush of people did start to thin with the Tokyo emergency declaration, but remember this is ordinarily a place of teeming crosswalks and breath-shortening packed trains at rush hour, so less crowded is a relative term.)
尽管自3月初以来，学校已经停课，大型活动也被取消，但这里——按照大多数标准衡量都是世界上最大的城市——的大部分生活在4月初以前都一直如常。（东京宣布紧急状态之后，拥挤的人群确实开始减少了，但请记住，这里通常是一个人行道上摩肩接踵、高峰时段的列车拥挤到令人窒息的地方，所以人群减少只是个相对说法。）
While my family and I Zoomed with friends isolated at home in New York and California late last month, we went to dinner with friends in a crowded riverside Tokyo neighborhood, wondering if we were foolhardy. At the briefing in late March to announce the delay of the Summer Olympics — a decision taken only after much international prodding — reporters packed into an unventilated room.
上个月底，当我和家人与在纽约和加州家中隔离的友人用Zoom视频通话的时候，我们和朋友去东京一个拥挤的河畔社区吃晚餐，还在思考这么做是否太鲁莽。在3月下旬宣布推迟举办夏季奥运会——这个决定是在国际社会多方督促下才做出的——的新闻发布会上，记者们都挤在了一个不通风的房间。
After I posted photos on social media, friends asked if we were safe. That’s it, I told my husband. Our family and the Tokyo bureau of The Times would initiate our own lockdowns. Our family would no longer get together with others in person, and our bureau staff moved immediately to working from home.
我在社交媒体上发布照片后，朋友们问我们是否安全。够了，我对丈夫说。我们一家人和时报东京分社将自行开始封锁。我们一家都不要再跟其他人面对面聚会，我们分社的员工也要立刻在家办公。
Two weeks later, following dire warnings from experts, the prime minister declared the state of emergency. That was April 7.
两周后，在专家发出严肃警告后，首相宣布全国进入紧急状态。那一天是4月7日。
Since then, people do seem to be taking requests to stay at home more seriously. Weekday ridership on Tokyo subway lines is down by about 60 percent compared with last year. Far fewer people crowd the sidewalks. A popular karaoke palace is shut. At a Roppongi izakaya — a Japanese-style pub — a chalked sign outside offers take-out, and advice: “Stay home.”
自那以后，人们对待在家里的要求似乎认真起来。与去年相比，东京地铁的工作日客流量下降了约60%。人行道上的人流大大减少。一家颇受欢迎的卡拉OK厅关门了。六本木一家居酒屋外面放着一块用粉笔写的外卖牌子，上面还建议道：“待在家里。”
Still, even with much lower testing than in many other nations, Japan had confirmed 10,361 infections and 161 deaths as of Saturday. Some hospitals in Tokyo warn that they cannot cope with coronavirus patients already being admitted.
然而，尽管检测数量要比其他国家少很多，截止到上周六，日本仍有10361例感染和161例死亡。东京的一些医院警告称，他们无法应付那么多已经住院的冠状病毒患者。
As Tokyo tries to hang on to some sense of itself, it feels like people are trying to thread a needle they cannot see. The government says residents need to reduce human contact by 80 percent to flatten the curve. Yet it seems too many people are trying to squeeze into the 20 percent.
东京还在努力保留几分原有的自我，这感觉就像人们试图将线头穿过一根他们看不见的针。政府说居民要减少80%的人际接触才能压平曲线。然而挤破头想成为那20%的人似乎太多了。
At home in our living room, we periodically hear loudspeaker messages booming over our neighborhood. “Please refrain from going outside,” we are told. I wonder if enough people are listening.
在家中的客厅里，我们时不时听到扩音器传来的消息在社区中回荡。“请不要到外面去，”我们被告知。我好奇听进去的人会有多少。