Winter Blues

It is fully winter in my little corner of Japan now. I left my cozy Canadian abode and arrived in my chilly Japanese apartment, and a little part of me died (my little toe, from frostbite, well...not actually). It tis the season to complain about the weather, and trying to out-do fellow JETs on how much cold we have to suffer, or rubbing their noses in the warmth we have, so I thought I'd try to get it all out at the beginning. Here we go.

One of the most common questions I get from Japanese people is if it is colder in Canada. To which I reply "Yes, but in Canada we have central heating." You can correctly assume from that statement that Japan does not have central heating. I am told that in the far north of Japan, they do! But here.. they don't.

My heating options for my apartment are as follows:
1. Reverse air conditioning. I have 3 air conditioners in my apartment that have the ability to put out lukewarm air. This is what I did last year.
2. Space heater. I have one, and I can run on either 1200volts or 600volts. It does an alright job of keeping the edge out of the air.
3. Kerosene heater. I have one, I've never used it. They do put out a decent amount of heat, but it involved smelly kerosene, me buying some and figuring out how to put it in, and opening a window as to prevent death by fumes. The idea of opening a window when I'm trying to heat just seems foolish. More on that later.
4. Kotatsu. Imagine a coffee table, with a heater under the table top, and a blanket all around. This idea is great, until of course you want to use your hands and or leave your kotatsu to do something in your otherwise very cold apartment. I hide under this most nights, with warm legs and sometimes with gloves on. I have (and many others as well) fallen asleep under a kotatsu

Alas.

My apartment has little/no insulation. Which means the heat does not stay. That my outside walls are cold to the touch and my windows are single paned. To remedy the window situation, I have put bubble wrap on the windows to act as a second layer. (I'm not alone in this idea-- there is a whole bubble wrap section of the homestore that emerges in the winter for this very reason. I do have neighbours above and below me, but none beside, but even so my floors don't feel even a little bit of that heat. All attempts at heating are never ending. I can run the reverse air conditioning, but it will never stop, even if I set it at 15 degrees.That's my home situation. Now on to schools!

My schools' general policy is that once it is colder than 8 degrees Celsius, they turn on the heaters. While you might think that Japan is a bastion of futuristic awesomeness, while they seem to have a solid grasp on the robots... they can't quite wrap their minds around the "hot air rises" concept. It's a tricky one, but the general idea that if you have a heater in a classroom, opening the window that is closest to the ceiling means that the HOT AIR DOES NOT STAY AND WARM UP THE ROOM! SO the kid sitting right next to the heater is melting, while the kid at the back of the classroom is freezing. I usually hover near the heater during class. In the staff room at the junior high, we have a kerosene stove, with a chimney running to a hole in the ceiling for ventilation. It's usually pretty warm in the staff room, and sad to leave it. Except of course when they refuel the stove, which is right next to me. At elementary schools the classrooms are usually somewhat warm. Which is to say wearing a long sleeve shirt, heavy sweater, long johns and pants, and slippers, usually leaves me feeling OK. Thankfully by mid-March things start warming up, and thankfully I don't live any farther north than I do. Friends of mine who live about 1hour away are blanketed in snow for 2 1/2 months, while the snow only shows up once or twice in my neighbourhood.