Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike’s entreaty to residents to keep away from each other in order to halt the spread of COVID-19 has inspired a computer game of her navigating through crowds while uttering her daily “mitsu desu” call for social distancing.

Many major cities, including New York and London, have locked down their residents and forced bars and restaurants to close with threats of fines.

But the Japanese government’s state of emergency is more permissive, and the governor of the world’s biggest metropolis — home to 36 million people — can only issue a request that residents stay home and ask businesses shutter temporarily.

While many have done so, some bars, restaurants and cafes remain open, with many of the city’s streets far from empty.

A former TV announcer and government minister, who studied Arabic in Egypt, Koike has clashed with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government over the scope of measures needed to keep residents at home.

At daily briefings, she wears a face mask while urging people to keep their distance from others, avoiding crowds and enclosed spaces. There are more than 11,000 cases of COVID-19 in Japan of which more than a quarter are in Tokyo.

The game, published by Twitter user Gunjo Chikin, includes a character resembling Abe who provides two face masks to Koike. Her social distancing circle expands as she moves to harder levels. Critics have accused Abe of reacting slowly to the pandemic, and some have ridiculed his plan to send two cloth face masks to every household in Japan.

Gunjo Chikin, who in a tweet on Sunday said Twitter had blocked access to the game site, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A tweeted Google Analytics page showed there had been more than a million views of the page in the past seven days.

An electro-pop song chanting Koike’s “mitsu desu” message has also been posted on Twitter, and has garnered 300,000 views.

RELATED PHOTOS Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike attends a news conference on April 10. | REUTERS