Category: experiences

About the Cold

The other day, when I mentioned that I woke up to 4 degrees inside the house, I didn’t expect two things:

  1. That it could get even colder – all the way down to 2 degrees and
  2. that I would receive so many messages about this.

So, let me explain a bit what’s going on and how I deal with the cold. After all, I can’t stay in bed all day. That’s Pumpkin’s responsibility.

Traditional houses in Japan have always been built to allow for lots of airflow – there’s the gaps under the tatami, the shoji and fusuma made from paper, and the wooden framework that’s maybe 10 cm thick at best. This is great in the heat and humidity of summer, when every puff of air is valuable. In winter, even the Japanese are less appreciative about the matter.

And if you think that modern houses are better, you are mistaken. Even though the building materials are better and more airtight in general, 10 cm of insulation (at best) are not sufficient to keep in the warmth over night, even if there were central heating. And let’s not mention my personal nemesis/pet peeve, those single-glazed windows…

So, even though you get used to living in a freezing house, the Japanese battle the three coldest months of the year on various fronts. And I try my best to follow their example.

  • Layers and Layers of Clothes.
    A special type of underwear called “heat tech” is extremely popular, as are thin down jackets as outer layer for indoors. In between, there can be several layers of sweaters; cotton, wool, fleece, anything goes, really.
  • Space heaters.
    Except for the northern prefectures like Hokkaido, central heating is unknown in Japan. And when you think of it, it’s quite a waste to heat a room that’s unused all day. So, the Japanese use space heaters that they turn on when needed. Some of them are electric or gas-powered, but nowadays, the ubiquitous air-condition is used, which all have a special setting for heating.
    Traditionally, a kotatsu was used, that’s a low table with a heating element underneath, over which a heavy blanket was placed to trap the warmth. Many families still use them. They wear heavy jackets on top, while their nether regions underneath the blanket stay warm without so much as socks even.
  • Consolidation.
    If all else fails, you can move your life into a single room for a few months. Instead of heating several rooms one at a time, all activities take place in the living room, for example. In the evening, you just put out the futon for everybody. This is easier if you don’t have kids, though.
  • Hot baths.
    Another thing that helps against the colds, and which the Japanese perform as a daily habit throughout the year, is taking a hot bath just before bedtime. With the body nicely heated up by the ofuro, falling asleep is quite easy, no matter the temperature in the bedroom.

In the new house, I do mostly the layering and the space heaters, with only the occasional hot bath. Thankfully, I got myself a really nice woolen blanked 2 years ago, so I don’t need to heat the bedroom at all.

Also, the cold doesn’t “bite” the same every time the thermometer shows the same number. Thankfully, all the windows are closing properly here, so there’s no draft. However, I found out that on rainy or snowy days, it feels colder than when the humidity is low. Sadly, there’s not much I can do about that. Other than hope for an early spring, that is. This year, I’m not hopeful…

Close Corona

Today, one of my English students cancelled his class – he caught the Corona. He now has to stay home for 10 days and take care of himself. Don’t worry, the chances that I’ll get sick too – from him at least – are minimal, since we only meet every 2 weeks, and he was just fine the last time.

After one of my Austrian friends who caught the virus in 2020 already, this is only the second person I know, personally, who has been infected. To be fair, my circle of friends is rather limited.

Still, I can see why people are not worried much anymore if infections don’t happen to their own family or friends. Heck, I’m not worried at all, either. After two years of this, there’s only so much you can do, really.

New Routines

Day by day, I’m getting more and more used to my new house and the neighborhood. Since the move, I’ve had to adjust a few of my routines – and I don’t mean the new ones involving Pumpkin. As weird as it may sound – after all, I moved less than 5 km – but life does feel different here.

First, it’s so much more quiet, but in a neighborhood without through traffic, this is to be expected. Now I’m enjoying the quiet after dark, and I even go to bed relatively early these days. Of course, it’s still very cold, so there’s that; I’ll probably return to my night-owl ways once my house isn’t freezing cold in the nights anymore.

Second, I now know my mail man! He usually comes at around 10:30 every day, so it’s easy to stop him on the way. Since there is still the old nameplate at the door (I’m working on it…) I had to explain the new resident situation again. I’m not receiving any mail for my company, which will be a problem once tax season arrives… Anyway, I never received much mail, and there are far fewer ads coming (mostly for food and takeout), so he’s passing me by most of the days. Dear friends: Send more letters!

Third, I needed to get used to a new garbage disposal schedule. Garbage days are the same as before, but in the old apartment, I could bring my garbage down to the collection whenever I wanted, and the management would put it out on the appropriate days.

Now I have to do this myself on the very day (and not the evening before), and what’s worse: The collection is quite early in the morning. Twice already, I watched the garbage truck pass by, bags in hand… As long as it’s winter, that’s not a big deal, I’ll just store the bags another week. But in summer that is not advisable. We’ll see how the early rising will go then.

So yes, lots of new routines. Who would have thought…

I’m a Winner!

Of course I am, ever since I moved to Japan…

Seriously: I have won the Nengajo Lottery. Every December, Japanese people send millions of nengajo New Year cards, which are delivered early in the morning on New Year’s Day. Each and every one of these cards has a 6-digit lottery number, and on January 16, you can find out if you’ve won anything.

First prize (6 correct numbers; one out of a million cards; 1,916 winners max) are 300,000 yen in cash (or 310,000 for online shopping or 200,000 yen plus a set of 2021 stamps.)

Second prize (4 correct numbers; one out of 10,000 cards; 191,660 winners max) are a number of choices from food to household articles. I’m not sure what they are worth, but I guess several thousand yen each.

Third prize (3×2 correct numbers; three out of 100 cards; 57,498,015 winners max) are these two cute stamps with tigers. They are meant to send one letter and one postcard within Japan, but I’m wondering how many winners actually use them.

Now guess which prize I won. 😉

Cold…

It’s really cold in Kyoto right now. I’m sleeping with two sweaters and woollen socks because I feel chilled even underneath my thick woollen duvet with extra blanket on top. The house is so much colder than the old apartment; today I woke up to 4 degrees.

Also, it’s snowing again. In all my years in Kyoto, it has never snowed so often and so much as this winter. Of course, I still love the snow, but the novelty wears off quite quickly to be honest. It snowed all afternoon yesterday and all through the night, and it’s still snowing right now. This is my garden this morning at 8:30 am.

Pumpkin is not amused about the temperatures. He loves watching the birds outside, and I think he understands that they are freezing even more than he does. Right now he sits on my lap, purring, happily keeping me from work. I’ll have to relocate him soon…

Addicted to Paper

One thing you’ll find out very quickly when you have to move is: You have a lot of stuff. Possibly even way too much. My personal “way too much” is paper. Not paperwork or books, I don’t even dare mention these. I’m talking about plain, white, as yet unused paper.

This is all the paper I brought with me on my move: notebooks and booklets of all sizes. Large notepaper left over from my uni days, bound and unbound. Small loose sheets for taking notes by the phone. Tiny scratch pads for jutting down ideas on the move. One ream of printer paper for the office and another stack twice as high of old, one-sided printouts that can be reused. Just like the big old envelopes I have cut up for this purpose. There is also a collection of cardboard in all sizes, to reuse in art projects.

What is not there are my post-it notes in multiple colours and sizes (of course) and my collection of postcards and writing paper and corresponding envelopes. They form their own special mount doom upstairs.

Altogether, this was two moving boxes full of paper. With nothing written on it because partially used notebooks are elsewhere yet.

Do you think I have a problem?

Fully Vaccinated

Time for celebrations – I got my second Corona shot yesterday afternoon! I was fine yesterday evening and today as well, but now I’m working up a bit of a fever. Nothing serious – yet – so I’ll just put myself to bed with some hot tea and my grandmother’s sure-fire cure for colds. I’m sure I’ll be fine again tomorrow.

I’m glad I am finally fully vaccinated, there were some bumps on the road initially. As mentioned before, I registered for my shots in the beginning of July and expected a quick turnaround. Unfortunately, there were supply problems, so Kyoto Prefecture stopped all vaccinations for about 3 weeks. So, my first appointment was only on August 14.

But once the schedule was fixed, everything went smoothly. We were asked to arrive 10 minutes early, and then we were taken through the procedure in small groups of 4 people to minimize waiting time. There were 6 stations for my first shot, and 5 for the second one (no need to make another appointment), from name taking to health checking to the actual jab.

Excepting the waiting time before and after, the whole procedure took only 10 minutes. Everything was super organised, the volunteers – many students but also adults – were very friendly and patient, and I felt well taken care of. Japan for the win!

Anyway, not much is going to change with respect to masks and other restrictions. With relatively low vaccination rates (some 40% have received both, 50% only one shot) and the delta variant breezing through the country, we’ll be lucky if there’s no further lockdown, pardon me: state of emergency. I’m not very optimistic though…

Anyway, off to bed with tea and a book. See you soon!

Still Busy…

Wow, I’m still swamped with work. A number of new projects that I’m involved in have started and we’re still kind of feeling our way through them. Then I have daily meetings where I have to out of the house *gasp* every day until next Tuesday, which will not help with the workload. And on top of all that are a number of private emails I have to answer and most of them are going to be pretty long. How is it that there’s nothing much for weeks and then everything happens at the same time? Standard work conditions for the self-employed I guess.

So, sorry for another super short post where I’m essentially telling you that not much is happening.

But: big things are afoot. Really big things, and I think I’ll be able to share them with you in a couple of weeks, if everything runs smoothly. So, bear with me for a bit longer, please.

Weather Woes

raindrops on a window

It’s a very cool August in Kyoto, much more so than usual. It’s been raining almost every day now, sometimes very heavily. Although this is the start of the typhoon season, there is no typhoon in sight right now. To me, the whole year seems to be more rainy than usual. Back in May we already had several weeks of rainfall when it used to be pretty sunny. And then of course the normal tsuyu – rainy season – kicked off in June just like every year.

Kyoto city has been taking the rain relatively well as far as I know, but in other parts of the country, the rainfall caused floodings, landslides, and a number of people were killed already. Let’s hope it doesn’t get any worse. While I like the cool weather right now – I don’t enjoy being drenched in sweat for months – I hope that this is not a foreboding of a chilly winter. Or something even worse…

No doubt what’s going on. Global warming (aka climate change) is real, and we’re feeling it already. So: turn off your lights (and your aircon) if you don’t need it, leave your car in the garage and ride your bicycle or the bus and let’s do something about this! Yes, we can! 😉