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| Wouldn't make a difference here... |
As I mention this every year, I thought I should follow through with my tradition and complain about the cold this year again. Ok, Tokyo is not that extremely cold compared to northern Europe or northern north america but it's the lack of central heating and proper insulation that makes it feel a lot worse here... Although the Salaryman base of operations is a new house and built a lot smarter to keep some of the heat inside, it still is pretty cold inside and now after the whole Fukushima ordeal electricity is not something that you want to use too much of (both for financial and general power saving reasons) making it hard to protect oneself from the cold apart from putting on another layer...
Unfortunately we do not have any temporary escape plan this year either, before babies and stuff, this would be the perfect time to take a quick vacation to a considerable warmer country in south-east asia and get to hate on the heat again before coming back to the giant fridge that is Japan. So we just have to gut through another month or so of cold before spring...
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5 comments:
Maybe you could stuff old newspapers around the walls to make an extra layer of insulation?
I'm so glad I'm in Australia right now!
Just had an argument with 'the Native Wife' on that topic this morning. She got fed up that I did not accept that 'the rules' say insulation should be shite in Kanto, and insisted there can be no intelligent reason to limit insulation - and that no other nation lives like this.
Doghouse: me.
This hits a very raw nerve with me. I work on climate and energy policy and the only thing that gets my blood racing more in Japan other than the insulation thingie is seeing clerks at my ekimae supermarket stuff my groceries into endless numbers of plastic bags in a famously resource-poor country.
I personally refuse to turn off my heat. I have three electric heaters in my house and, although i hardly ever use all three at once, i make sure that the house is toasty. I pay through my nose on my electricity bill and that's fine - it's my choice and i get to live with the bad karma.
But i'm itching for somebody to tell me to my face that during such rough times for Kanto i should practice setsuden. It definitely is not my fault that bad governance has allowed the local electricity utilities to build nuclear power plants next to active fault lines, or that dangou is tolerated, allowing construction companies to be skinflint about insulation. Jigou jitoku, i say, and i am NOT gonna freeze off my toes in my own damn house just because it is so Zen!
Also, for my two-month academic holiday, i am flying off to Europe to stay warm until spring. Insanity, going to Finland in the middle of winter because one is too cold!
I got 2 pairs of socks on because tatami is SOOOO FUCKING GOOD at insulating. The plastic bag phenom freaks me out to considering all the eco signs everywhere? Does Japan make a special kinda plastic bag?
Supposed to get even colder this week....fucking Yay!!
I love complaining about the cold, it's my hobby. The condensation on windows so you can't see out -- like living in an aquarium. You have to constantly wipe up the moisture (unless you actually want to grow mushrooms on your walls) or leave the windows open and be cold: yet another diabolical plot to create more busy-housework and hardship (like the need to dust -- where does all the dust come from and why?).
I hate pumping kerosene into the heater. I always manage to dribble some highly flammable liquid on my person and get nervous that I'll somehow come into contact with an open flame and BOOM! Gone. I'm not a guy, I'm not used to hoses and dribbling. And I hate that the heater plays "Love Me Tender" when it's out of fuel. I associate Elvis with going out into the cold and leaking deadly fluids on myself.
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