Brrrr

I guess I've gotten used to the cold now. Gifu city's not exactly a cold place on a world scale, but it does get colder than Melbourne in the winter. The real trouble with winter here in Japan is that central heating is not common. It seems that only the very rich, with new houses, have central heating. Everyone else makes due with small electric bar heaters, a kotatsu, or kerosene heaters. Kotatsu? It's an ingenious invention, really- I don't know why they haven't caught on everywhere in the world. A kotatsu is a low table with a heating element attached to the underside of it. You put a blanket over it and sit with your legs and most of your body underneath the blanket. The heat is trapped under the table and blanket and only your head and arms (if you're eating) are exposed. Lots of JETs have them, but unfortunately, I don't. They aren't cheap, and apparently none of my predecessors had one (unless they sold it before I arrived to get some extra cash, which wouldn't surprise me). But most of my friends have a kotatsu and we've spent many pleasant nights enveloped in its warmth.

All I have is one electric bar heater. It works ok... I'm basically living in just one room of my apartment over winter because that's all it will heat. And I use the term 'heat' loosely. At this very moment, my room is 14.6 degrees Celcius. Believe it or not, that's warm. For safety and financial reasons, I leave the heater off overnight, which means that this morning, for example, it was 5 degrees in my room when I woke up. Yep, I can see my breath as I'm getting ready for work. But like I said, I think I'm used to it now. And people live in much worse conditions than this, anyway.

The other heating option here in Japan is the very antiquated kerosene system. The heaters themselves are pretty advanced, all technological, with timers and sensors to 'ensure' that dangerous gases don't build up... but I still have my doubts about them. To keep a kerosene heater full, you have to lug a storage container to the gas station, have it filled up, and lug it back to your apartment. All the while trying desperately not to spill it. Then you have to fill the heater up, again trying even more desperately not to spill it, so you don't soak your carpet in flammable liquid. Then, while the heater is running, you should actually leave a window open so that carbon monoxide and other fumes don't build up and slowly poison you to death, over time. Plenty of people ignore the leave-the-window-open advice, and I heard first-hand from one JET that he ended up getting really bad respiratory problems as a result. The other thing that's scared me off kerosene is that my desk is in prime position at work, right next to one of two huge kerosene heaters in the staffroom. So I inhale plenty of poisonous fumes during the day- why get them at night too?

As much as I think I've adapted to my 4-degree bedroom, I can't wait for spring to come. Which apparently we are well into by now, according to the Chinese lunar calendar. Whaaaat? Mid-February? Spring? Yes, it really is too good to be true- no such luck. I guess I'm stuck wearing my ski coat and scarf and huddling next to the heater for another month or so.