Commentary: Japan demands COVID tests and tracking. California, not so much. Which is right?

This long, strange season of the pandemic has made so many things impossible that it’s easy to forget the many things it’s made newly possible. For me, one of its unexpected gifts has been a round-the-clock immersion — and instruction — in the vast gap between the two continents I call home and the radical differences that still cut up our seemingly connected global neighborhood.

Ten times during the age of COVID-19 I’ve flown across the Pacific between my longtime apartment in Japan and my