When the COVID-19 pandemic made it difficult for foreign scholars to study or research in Japan, effectively making the area or area studies inaccessible, it was exacerbating trends in academia with regard to "place," ranging from the belief that big data relieves the need to study in the area, to neoliberal attempts to render the university a placeless site of MOOCs within media conglomeration. It raised the question how Japan studies should relate to these changes in systems of labor, infrastructure, communication, and geography in a postmodern age shaped by a pandemic. Even if there are critiques of the imperial origins of area studies, aren't there benefits to retaining notions of place through, for instance, such concepts as liquid area studies? Can we talk about place without tying it to the nation? As the Japanese government made claims about who belonged in Japan during the pandemic, what are our arguments for being in a place? These queries come at a time when Black Lives Matter posed the question of what belongs in Asian Studies. Japan studies must relocate itself in relation to fields such as critical race studies, questioning place without abandoning place. A liquid area studies requires a more liquid concept of place.