Like you haven't already heard

Indeed, the inevitable has happend. The H1N1 virus has reached the shore of Japan. According to an article on the Washington Post's website the number of cases in Japan has reached 191. Schools in Kobe and Osaka were shut down. Students ended up gathering for karaoke because they had nothing else to do. Some of the owners of the karaoke clubs put up signs saying that teenagers whose schools were closed down due to the flu were not welcome there.
Here in Tsukuba, there are fliers posted all over the student service offices warning about the dangers of the flu. As far as I know, if the H1N1 virus makes it as far as Tsukuba, the school will be closed down like the schools in Osaka. We're supposed to be keeping an eye on the school's website. Suzuki-sensei, my teacher for Japanese Culture and my academic adviser here, talked to us about what to do if we felt sick. He said Tsukuba has a facility that is capable of dealing with infected persons. I'm too concerned about my allergies and school work to worry too much about catching swine flu.
Some students are hoping for school closings, but I'm not really looking forward to that. I'm hoping the school won't close. It's nice having things to do that mean something to me. Otherwise, I guess I'll just go back to messing around on the internet all day. As fun as that may sound, more than an hour or so of internet gets boring pretty quickly.
The Yomiyuri Shimbun has a fairly detailed history of some of the travel patterns of the swine flu in Japan. (Contrary to the information in the web article, Ibaraki's schools are not closed yet). With so many people living in such a small amount of space it is likely that H1N1 will continue to spread.