This interview was conducted via Zoom on June 27, 2021. The transcript was reviewed and approved by Ms. Toyoda prior to publishing.
Introduction
Unseen Japan (UJ): Before we get started, I’d like to know some basic things. Would you mind giving a self-introduction; who you are, where you’re from, basic interests, that kind of thing?
LaShawn Toyoda (LT): Sure. So my name is LaShawn Toyoda, I’m 36 years old, and I am a software engineer currently living in Tokyo. But my nickname is @theyokohamalife, because that’s where I lived for at least seven out of the 10 years I’ve been living in Japan.
I originally came here in April of 2011. I’m from Maryland in the US, and for eight [to] eight-and-a-half years I taught English, mostly at an Eikaiwa in Yokohama. Then I also taught university for a year until the pandemic hit, and that’s when I—like during the state of emergency, that’s when I started to study code, like last summer. And I attended a coding boot camp, and after I graduated and did a bunch of job hunting, I landed my first job in April of this year. So I haven’t been a software engineer for very long.
And I started FindADoc, just as a side project to help out people, you know, people that I saw were in distress on Twitter, and it just really took off.
UJ: OK, cool. So was it the general employment issues from the pandemic that inspired you to start learning code or was there an additional or different reason you wanted to learn how to code and become a software engineer?
LT: Mainly it was because of the pandemic. A lot of schools were shutting down and classes were cancelled until they could figure out what to do about the courses, like if they were gonna do online courses or just delay like, the start of the semester.
But [I also learned how to code] for financial stability and my daughter. I wasn’t sure if I was gonna stay in Japan or go back to the US with my daughter; in which case I needed to raise my income so I could take care of her better. It was just problems everywhere that just kinda made me kind of think like, “Hmmm, I probably need to change careers because this is just something that’s not reliable.”
UJ: Mm-hmm.
LT: I had already reached as far as I could in my career as far as English teaching is concerned, like once you’re a university teacher, you can’t really go any higher than that. And so I thought like, “OK, well I don’t wanna be stuck doing this.” (Laughs)
UJ: Yeah, naturally. (Laughs) It’s a very common gateway, but very few people really, you know, stay. Especially considering that English teaching isn’t really that revered as it once was in Japan. It just kinda seems like, the 80s was really the heyday of “We want as [many] English teachers and [as much] English education as possible” and it just kinda petered out for…reasons unbeknownst to us of course.
LT: Yeah, the salaries have really stagnated. Even the company I worked for, my salary’s considered higher than what most Eikaiwa companies were offering. But due to the tax increases in Japan, and all the other increases like health insurance costs and whatnot, my take-home pay actually went down every year, instead of going up.
UJ: Yeah sometimes I experience that too. Because I teach English as my day job. So I (laughs) totally understand where you’re coming from.
LT: (overlaps) So you know what it’s like! (Laughs)
UJ: Exactly! The thing is I love doing it, you know? I love teaching English, I just, sometimes I think, the bureaucratic aspects outside of English can kind of put a damper on certain things, you know?
LT: Yeah for some places it is a rewarding job, because you’re [directly helping people], you can see their improvement when you meet with them every week and you make a connection to a lot of people and I do miss that about the job. Up until now, my coding journey has been kind of lonely. (laughs) Sitting in my room, staring at my screen, not really having any kind of social interaction.
UJ: I hope you got some good glasses to help you with eyestrain and stuff.
LT: Actually, I have glasses, but I can’t find them because I can’t find my glasses without my glasses.
UJ: Yeah I know that very well. (Both laugh)
Personal Experience with the Pandemic
UJ: So I guess you kind of answered my next question, but if you want to elaborate you can: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected you personally and professionally?
LT: Well, because my daughter was born in September of 2019, she was still very young when the pandemic hit, and we were planning to visit my family for the first time in America. And that’s when everything happened in March and April. So flights got canceled, and I never got to introduce my daughter to my family. They’ve seen her online, but never actually met her face-to-face.
And it’s been hard. I was really scared for my parents because they’re older. Actually, my stepfather passed away from COVID in December.
UJ: My condolences.
LT: Thank you. And we were kind of worried, we kind of knew it was gonna happen because he was in a nursing home and it started going around. So I was really scared for my mom, that the same thing would happen to her, but we’re fortunate that she was able to get her vaccine. Hopefully, we’ll be able to visit the US at the end of July, if the vaccine passports and everything goes well. So I was looking around, trying to find vaccines too, and I saw tweets from people–like rumors like, “Hey, I managed to get a shot at such-and-such clinic without a voucher” and I was like, “What? How?”
So there were just rumors circulating around, but it’s really hard to find any kind of information, and people were just really stressed out because…the government wasn’t telling them anything. They’re looking at the ward websites, there weren’t any updates for English.
Even if you go to the mass vaccination websites; if you click on “English”, it says nothing at all about the vaccine center, it just shows you a video of the military. It’s really hard getting any kind of information if you don’t speak Japanese, so I wanted to figure out a way to help people with that.
UJ: Do you feel that Japan’s response to the pandemic was adequate?
LT: No. I felt that it’s been very sluggish. We are well over a year into the pandemic and the system has just still been completely chaotic. There are no real procedures set in stone. Even just yesterday [June 26th] clinics still aren’t sure who it’s OK to give a vaccine to and who it’s not because it’s been left up to local governments. So there are different policies all over the place just depending on where you live.
So even people who are high-risk can’t get a vaccine or even get the vouchers for a vaccine because of the inadequate policies that are in place right now.
UJ: I feel that what–at the very least incenses me–and that’s the most polite way I can say this while being recorded, is that I agree with you, they had a year. I wrote about this in a previous article, but basically, I wrote, “You’d think that since Japan was hosting the Olympics and postponed it by a whole year, you would think that we would have been fully vaccinated by at least May or April.
And this touch-and-go state of emergencies has been frustrating and quite frankly, a very scary experience living here, I live in Tokyo as well.
LT: Yeah it has been scary.
UJ: It’s very scary, and everyone back home’s been like, “When can you come home?” I couldn’t even–I haven’t seen my family since January 2020–couldn’t even see them for the winter holidays like I usually do, because I’m afraid I can’t come back [to Japan]. And I got friends outside the country who wanna come see me, but there’s a tourist ban, so personally speaking, it’s been a very isolating experience. I can’t even imagine what it would be like [for] you and a kid to raise as well.
LT: It’s been scary, I thought about like, “What if I just went home?” Just so my family can meet my daughter. What if they don’t let me back in the country? My daughter’s Japanese so she can get in no problem, but what if we got separated? What if they put me in quarantine and said, “We’re gonna take your daughter, she can go.”
UJ: [In that case] where would she go?
LT: To her grandparents? That’s the thing I don’t know, just due to the lack of communication from the government. They don’t really have any solid requirements listed anywhere for people to find. It’s not a risk that many people are willing to take. It’s better to just stay put, no matter how long it takes, a year, two years, than risk not being able to come back to your home.
UJ: Or leave to go anywhere else.
LT: Yeah.
How FindADoc Was Created
UJ: You answered this question earlier, but feel free to elaborate. What prompted you to create “Find A Doc”? You mentioned how there wasn’t a lot of foreigner-friendly, or English-language information for foreigners to get vaccines and how there were rumors going around, so was this database created to basically serve as a touchstone, as a centralized place for people to go and find a way to get vaccines?
LT: Yeah, when I first started coding, I knew I just wanted to do some kind of project that would help the immigrant community in Japan. That was always a goal of mine. But I didn’t know what would be the best thing to do, so one day, it was like, back in November of last year on Twitter, I just asked, “Hey, for those living in Japan, what could I do for a solo project that would actually improve your quality of life here in Japan? What are some of your ideas?”
And I got a lot of wonderful suggestions, and one that stuck with me was Alex Knight, he suggested having some kind of website that listed services that were available in English. For doctors, lawyers, hair salons, just anywhere where they spoke more than Japanese.
I thought, “Hey, that’s really great!” I know that, even after living here for ten years, even though I can speak Japanese, when it comes to my health, or anything medical-related, sometimes it’s just more comforting to be able to speak to someone in my native language and understand it all clearly.
UJ: (overlaps) Absolutely, I totally agree.
LT: I had my baby in a completely Japanese environment, it was not fun. (laughs) They were trying to explain to me the correct way to push while I was in labor in Japanese. I got it, I did it, but it was more stressful than it would have been if I had been there with someone who could speak some English. At the time, I was still learning how to code. I was only halfway through the coding bootcamp, so my skills weren’t good enough to make it. But I always thought about it: “I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna make it someday.”
So, last Sunday [June 20th], I was just scrolling through Twitter, so many people were stressed out and upset because they weren’t getting their vouchers. One person, in particular, had a heart condition, and he was seriously worried he might catch [COVID-19] and die. I just thought, “OK, I gotta do something.”
I told my husband–I just looked at him and said, “Watch the baby. I’m gonna go make something.” And I just went downstairs, set up my computer, cranked it out, and posted it on Twitter. That’s how it got started.
UJ: What have been the most rewarding and challenging aspects of FindADoc?
LT: The most challenging [part] has just been keeping on top of information, making sure it’s as accurate as possible, [and] making sure that the information people are getting is safe. There have been a few scam websites that we have had to be careful of. [We’re] making sure that the information is coming in from legitimate clinics. That’s been really hard.
But, just the fact that the project took off so quickly, it’s been hard making sure that the data is safe, secure and that the site connection can handle the high traffic. When I posted it Sunday [the 13th?] night, there were only two clinics, by the next day, we had 11 or so. Just in the first night, since I posted it, we got over 60,000 requests to the database, which I was not expecting–I wasn’t prepared for.
So the site actually went down, because I was using a free hosting service. (laughs) I had reached the quota, reached the limit. I was like, “Oh shit, what do I do?” So I had to hurry up and pay to increase the amount of database requests that we could get, and people started donating to keep the site up, which was absolutely amazing, so that’s really helped [us] out.
We grew from two clinics, to 11, to 40-plus, just within the span of 48 hours. And we got all of these volunteers to translate it, we now have it available in 18 different languages, which blew my mind. It’s really hard organizing that many people, that many contributions to the project.
I went from just coding to like, suddenly managing this huge team of contributors and I didn’t get sleep for a good two weeks, almost; between juggling my full-time job and FindADoc and being a mom, it’s been hectic.
UJ: Absolutely, I would imagine it’s been hectic. It’s amazing how–you said it yourself–the fact that it took off so quickly, and the fact that so many people were interested, just shows that you know, the vaccine demand is real. It’s not a fly-by-night situation, which kinda makes the whole voucher situation all the more frustrating, [but] we’ll get to that later.
The Vetting Process
You mentioned that there were some scam websites, some low-quality clinics that have been sent to the database. So what are the qualifications and vetting process to be entered into the database?
LT: Right now, I go through every submission that comes to the database before it shows up on the site. Because we get things like people trying to Rick Roll us. (laughs) I check that the [clinic] has been there for a while, [that] it’s existed for more than the past couple of weeks or months.
I check that it’s a legitimate location, that the doctors are real. I check that they actually have a waiting list, whether or not they’re accepting vouchers, or just their local residents. I check that the vaccines they’re offering are vaccines that are approved in Japan. Because we had a site that was advertising two vaccines that should not be in the country.
UJ: Yeah, I saw that. I mean, even if you didn’t know which vaccines were which, just the way they presented themselves, and I think there was one name that was just straight up–you know they made it up. (laughs) You know what I mean? Just seemed like, “What were they gonna do? Were they gonna inject us with Botox? Were they gonna demand money?” It just seemed like one of those shady situations that could have been…you know.
LT: And it’s scary because, people are so desperate for the vaccine right now, that some of them are willing to take the chance. They’re willing to just go and get it. They just want the shot, they’re not thinking about if it’s real, what are the consequences, what could happen to their health.
So it’s really scary, and I’m trying to be careful about that. I don’t want anyone to get hurt, you know?
UJ: No, never. That’s the last thing we need right now. Enough people have died, have gotten sick and hurt by [the government’s management of the pandemic].
LT: (overlaps) Exactly.
UJ: To get hurt by a bunk injection [from a scam clinic] would be devastating
LT: Yeah, exactly.
UJ: So in the future will the site only be related to the vaccine, or will there be future plans in relation to other medical services?
LT: Yeah, I had planned to add a general database for multilingual doctors. No matter what language you spoke–if you spoke French, you could search the database and see on a map the nearest French-speaking doctors. [I have yet to release it] because of trolls and fake submissions. [I just] want to make sure all the information we currently have is accurate and that the website is secure. Hopefully next week, I can get back to work on adding the long-term features to the site. Hopefully in the next week or two.
Because that’s the real goal of the site. The cancellation waitlists are a priority because the [database] is what the community needs right now. I think, hopefully, within the next month or two, people who want to get vaccinated will have already done so. Then we can move our focus to something else.
Government Crackdowns on Local Clinics
UJ: So these last couple of questions are going to be related to the recent–how do I say this–the recent situation [a children’s clinic in Tokyo]. Recently there was a clinic in [Tokyo] that was offering vaccines to pretty much everybody. Tell me how you originally felt upon hearing out that the clinic had open slots for vaccinations.
LT: It was unbelievable. Someone sent me a message about it on Twitter. And it seemed too good to be true like, “Is this real? Is it possible?” So I tried registering, just to see, and the registration went through, I was like, “OK.”
But even after I registered it still had that slot open. [I thought], “Hmm, is this a real clinic? Is this calendar broken?” But just in case, I added it to the database, because it seemed legitimate and it had a lot of reviews, the doctor’s very reputable, and I shared it on Twitter.
Before I knew it, hundreds, like actually hundreds of people had booked their appointments. I was getting messages and questions from everywhere. People asking me, “Is this real? Am I really gonna get the vaccine? This feels too good to be true!” So, that was a lot of stress on me because the only way I could verify it was by going there myself [on June 22nd], and it was over an hour away from my house by car.
On the way there, I was just–my stomach was in knots. I just felt the weight of a thousand people’s hopes and dreams on my shoulders. If that clinic didn’t work out, the entire internet would be mad at me. And I’d probably have to go into hiding. [But] they had the vaccines ready. It was a very small tiny place, it’s just a children’s clinic. That’s why they had so many spots available, no one was looking for children’s clinics with vaccines.
They were offering the vaccines at night or in the very early morning. When I got there, only five people could fit inside the clinic at a time. And they were swamped. Just getting absolutely slammed with telephone calls and e-mails, even while I was there. The nurses and staff could barely help us get the documents filled out.
But getting the vaccine itself was very quick. The doctor was wonderful, very nice, very friendly.
We were sitting in the waiting room, because you have to wait 15 minutes before you can leave. He said, “We’re not supposed to do this. We’ve been requested by the ward to not give the vaccine to anyone who lives outside of [the ward], or who doesn’t have a voucher. But they haven’t made a strong stance on it yet, so we’re just doing it anyway.”
So I was very grateful to the doctor. He was using his professional judgment and allowing people who wanted to get the vaccine to get it.
UJ: Exactly. As he should, as he should.
LT: Yeah. But then yesterday [June 26th] the ward contacted them and straight-up said, “Stop. Right now.” And it wasn’t even at the beginning of the day, I think it was halfway through. So people who had appointments in the morning were still able to get vaccinated, but then from the afternoon after they got contacted, they had to turn them away on the spot. That was really devastating to find out.
[When I originally went a few days before], at that time, their stance was basically, “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
UJ: Right, that’s what I saw on the thread, mm-hmm.
LT: If you got your [reservation], you’ll still get your shot, but if you call, and start specifically asking questions, they had to cancel you. That’s why I was telling people, “Stop calling! Don’t call. You have your e-mail, you have your confirmation, just go.”
UJ: It’s a shame that that had to be the case (laughs) for a vaccine! We’re trying not to die here!
LT: Exactly! [But because of the cancellations and confusion], the clinic has dealt with so much harrassment, not just over the phone, but in person. They’ve been screamed at. I’ve just been horrified to hear stories of how the staff has been treated because they’ve had to turn people away.
UJ: It’s really less about the clinic because the clinic did the right thing. It’s really about the government and the Hokenjo [health department] really just being insensitive to the situation.
LT: But also as of yesterday, Japan is experiencing a vaccine shortage. So that’s the reason why the government is cracking down on the clinics and saying,”You can’t vaccinate anyone without a voucher,” like 100%. Because they don’t have enough vaccines to go around, so much that they’re considering giving out AstraZeneca to people over the age of 60, [when previously] it had been approved for Japan, it had not been approved for clinics to administer. So it looks like that’s gonna change just due to the shortage.
UJ: Do you have an inkling as to why there might be a shortage?
LT: There is a shortage, for sure. You know Kono Taro, the one who’s in charge of the vaccine rollout? He said in the news that they had 50 million doses and already 45 million of those doses had been reserved for appointment slots. So the only way they can make sure that everyone gets two shots is if they have stricter policies for who the clinics can get them to.
UJ: So tell me how you felt when you got the news that the Hokenjo had cracked down on that clinic.
LT: I felt awful. I felt physically sick. Because I found out from people who were already in the clinic who had just been turned away. They had been waiting for the past week to get there [and] to get their shots. They saw on Twitter everyone else had gotten their shots successfully so they were hopeful. Then the policy came through and they were turned away without warning, right there at the counter. My heart just sunk.
I know people say it’s not my fault, I wasn’t responsible for it. But at the same time, I still felt bad because I told those people about the clinic and they had believed what I said and they were there because of me, and suddenly they were being let down.
UJ: Of course, obviously that was out of your control, but your feelings of guilt, I assume? They’re valid.
LT: Yeah.
UJ: You meant no harm. And I’m sure the doctor who was originally giving out the vaccines meant no harm. He was doing his Hippocratic job, you know?
LT: Yeah, the doctor was even standing there, apologizing to the people, [one of the declined patients] said. Saying he had no control over it, he’d give the vaccines out if he could, but the ward, the Hokenjo said they absolutely could not anymore.
UJ: What would happen? Would they get fined or arrested if they [continued to give out the vaccine]?
LT: I don’t know, it’s hard to say with Japan exactly what would happen. They might be forced to bow [at a press conference] (laughs) You don’t know, and it’s not a risk you wanna take, right?
UJ: Right.
LT: The doctor has a practice, he doesn’t wanna risk losing his license or getting shut down, so he’s gonna follow what they say.
UJ: Of course. I noticed you recently announced on Twitter that because of this situation–and you can let me know if I have this correct–that you’re either going to add information about [needing to be a local resident with a voucher] or you’re gonna take them off the database completely.
LT: So I stayed up late last night adding a new feature so when users visit the database, they can see very quickly, very clearly which clinics currently require a voucher and which don’t. It’s all up-to-date as of last night. But things are changing on a day-to-day basis, so what’s true today may not be true tomorrow. You know?
UJ: Right.
LT: I try to keep the database updated a couple of times a day. I [also have] a feature I’m adding that will say if you’re required to be a resident of that ward or not. Because I was tired, I went to bed, it was like three in the morning, I couldn’t go through 50 clinics (laughs).
But something I did do, was I created a dashboard for moderators. And I can’t say who yet, but someone is going to help me out with moderating the clinics. They have great Japanese, it’s better than mine, so they can get through the information much more quickly than I can. That way I can just focus on coding and getting new features out.
Plans for the Future
UJ: And in the midst of all this chaos, and success and let-downs, how have you been taking care of yourself, how have you been taking care of yourself during this time?
LT: Ah, it’s been rough. I try to–make sure I have adequate time with my daughter. When she gets home from daycare, I make sure that the time she’s home is completely focused on her. And as soon as I get her to bed, that’s when I get back to coding. I haven’t really slowed down in the past week and a half, you know? Like I know I can’t keep going at the pace I’m going at because I’m just gonna get burned out.
But I feel like, once I have the whole basic system complete, then I can relax and you know, take a breather. I went to the park yesterday, so that was good.
UJ: Yeah that is good. (laughs)
LT: For the first time (laughs) leaving the house since I got vaccinated. But I just feel like, right now is the time to just do what’s needed and I can relax and take care of myself later.
UJ: OK, I hope you do, I definitely don’t want you to burn out over this because you’ve been doing a lot of amazing work.
LT: (overlaps) I know, people have been worrying and they’ve been buying me lots of ko-fis.
Closing Thoughts
UJ: We’ll wrap this up soon, I just have a couple more questions to ask, is that OK?
LT: Sure.
UJ: So how do you feel about Japan’s vaccine voucher system?
LT: I feel like it’s a completely unnecessary system that has just hindered the vaccine rollout. I mean, we already have our health insurance cards, we already have our My Number cards. I think they could have easily prioritized and distributed the vaccines without the vouchers.
They could have simply said, “Hey, everyone over the age of 70 can get their vaccines from these dates.” All the clinics had to do was just check their ID, check their health insurance, make sure it’s valid, instead of waiting for these vouchers to come out and each local government having to decide when to mail them out and who to mail them out to and having all of these discrepancies between different locations.
I think Japan should have spent the past year looking at how other countries had done rollouts and learned from their successes and their mistakes instead of trying to go with their own system. The US handled the pandemic terribly, but when it came time to get the vaccines out, they really…
UJ: Yeah, they really pulled through.
LT: They did. I mean, they were taking over stadiums, giving vaccines in drive-thrus, and parking lots and pharmacies…whatever it took, they got the vaccines going and I think Japan could have learned from that.
UJ: I agree. Because in my [Tokyo] neighborhood, there are four pharmacies alone. And some of them are smaller dispensaries, right? Any one of those pharmacists could have given me a jab, months ago, if they were allowed. I’m speaking theoretically of course.
But I think to me what makes this voucher system a total farce is that–you know how when there’s an event like a concert or something and they have a lottery system so you get priority to get a ticket? [The government] is treating [the vaccine rollout] like that instead of a public health need.
LT: Exactly, exactly. And it’s not even accomplishing what it was set out to. Because there are people who should be given priority, like that person with a heart condition who should be given a vaccine early, but they aren’t. Just because they haven’t gotten a voucher because their local government hasn’t decided what an underlying illness is or isn’t. And that’s just not fair that you can’t get something that’s needed to live–that’s life-saving because of where you live.
UJ: Yeah, or [because] of how old you are. I remember I called the National Vaccine Hotline a [month] ago and they were really good. Even my interpreter, she sounded good too. My Japanese is intermediate, but I know enough to know what people are saying.
Everything I said…even my filler words she captured quite well in Japanese. And despite this, even they couldn’t give me an answer. It all came down to my local ward, and the fact that I had to wait for a ticket. And back then, we didn’t even know if they would come out for people under 65.
LT: Yeah, a lot of the ward websites didn’t even have a schedule or any information about when they would deliver them to the under-65s. It wasn’t even until the past couple days that some of them updated and said, “Yeah, you’ll be getting them sometime in the middle of July.” Then they sent them out the next week.
But it’s been absolutely chaotic and not handled well at all.
UJ: Do you think that this kind of, mealy-mouthed, hand-wringing way in which the government has handled this pandemic is in any way related to the Tokyo Olympics or just a general cultural sense of risk-aversion?
LT: See, I think if the government was serious about the Olympics, they would have been more serious about the rollout. They have over 70,000 people coming from a bunch of different countries bringing all these different variants with them.
So I don’t know if no one wants to take responsibility for that. Everyone’s just pushing blame and decision-making on to someone else, I honestly don’t know. But just as a normal resident it’s really frustrating and made me lose all confidence in the government to not just handle pandemics but any other emergency that we’ll experience in the future.
Because I mean, Japan is a country that has a lot of natural disasters. We’re definitely gonna have earthquakes in the future, we’re gonna have more volcanic eruptions, more tsunamis, more typhoons. So it just feels like the government needs to get its act together. But until then, in order to not feel hopeless, I just wanna do what I can to help the community help each other, and make up for what the government isn’t doing, just so we’re not stranded.
UJ: Absolutely. Just one last thing, [are there] plugs you wanna make, any comments you’d like to say before we close this out?
LT: I just wanna thank everyone that has contributed and helped out in some way with the project and also thank all the people who sent me messages and encouraging words and “thank-yous”, it’s been really helpful.
Especially when I’m up late at night trying to code and everything, it really keeps me going. Even when I get hate messages online or something, just knowing that there are people who have been helped have made it worth it and I want to continue developing new projects, so yeah, just keep a lookout.
UJ: All right. Thank you very much, LaShawn, and enjoy the rest of your evening, we’re gonna end this right now.
LT: Awesome, thank you so much.
