What his coworkers (thankfully) can’t see won’t hurt them, right?

SoraNews24’s headquarters is located in Tokyo’s Shinjuku neighborhood, and since that’s one of the most crowded parts of one of the most crowded cities on the planet, our staff has been working from home for the past several weeks. As one of our senior writers, ace reporter Mr. Sato feels a responsibility to act as a guiding force during this adaptation in work style, and so he took it upon himself to set a good example during a recent video conference.

While the relaxed atmosphere of telecommuting is definitely a plus, it’s possible to get too relaxed when working from home, leading to drops in your energy level and productivity. So for his most recent video conference, when most of his coworkers were dressed in T-shirts…

…they saw Mr. Sato in a suit!

His dapper duds threw the rest of the team for a loop. For a moment, they almost thought that it wasn’t Mr. Sato, but his twin brother, the respectable sibling who stayed behind in Shimane Prefecture to run the family business while our reporter ran off to chase his big-city dreams in Tokyo. But nope, this was indeed Mr. Sato, looking dressed to the nines in order to show that he’s still giving 100 percent effort in these troubled times.

However, at this point some of you might have noticed something strange. While a suit and tie is the norm at many Japanese companies, the dress code is decidedly more relaxed at the SoraNews24 offices, where it’s perfectly acceptable to show up in a T-shirt and extra-comfy jeans on the logic that they’re easier than other clothes to wrestle in. Mr. Sato doesn’t wear a suit to the office, so why would he wear one for a teleconference?

The answer is that he didn’t.

While the rest of the team saw Mr. Sato with a suit on, it was all just some techno-trickery, done with a digital foreground from video filter app Snap Camera. Sure, Mr. Sato put on a special outfit for the meeting, but it was his Japanese traditional fundoshi loincloth.

▼ Though he did go the extra mile of putting on some socks too.

And so Mr. Sato was able to attend the meeting looking like the epitome of formal class, while also feeling the cool spring breeze on his bare chest and upper thighs. Really, it was the best of both worlds, and now that he thinks about it, since so many of his coworkers also own loincloths, maybe some of their on-screen clothes were just digital add-ons too.

Related: Snap Camera
Photos ©SoraNews24
Screenshots: Snap Camera, Google Meet
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[ Read in Japanese ]