Surviving a Japanese house [winter ed.]

With 30+ degrees warm outside and summer in full swing, this might be a weird time to be thinking about last winter. But I find myself reflecting on Japanese houses and Japanese weather just as much now as I did then. Before I return to the present, I felt like going back in time to early January, when profuse sweating and air conditioner colds were distant inconveniences, not to be feared.

Coming from a northern country with long winters, I continue to be amazed by Japanese houses in the chillier months.

They are cold. Man, are they cold.



When you go live abroad for a while, you soon realize that there are many things we take for granted just because that's how it's always been where we grew up. Some of the things I took for granted were double glazing, walls thick with insulation, and water-circulated central heating. Though temperatures below freezing are the norm in December through February, I have rarely felt uncomfortably cold in a Swedish house.

In Japan, I am cold every day in winter. Indoors, that is.

Why? No mystery there. The walls of my tiny apartment are thin, an entire wall of the bedroom/living room is made of single-layer glass, there's a vent in the kitchen that's basically a five-by-five centimeter wind tunnel, and cold air falls down through the ceiling-mounted bathroom fan, turning the unit bath into a serviceable backup refrigerator. There's no hot water central heating of course, only the standard air-conditioning unit that, at a cost, will make the top forty or fifty centimeters of your room very warm and comfortable, while your feet are freezing.



Still, the apartment is small and it doesn't take too much to bring it to temperatures where man can exist comfortably, say, around 20-22 degrees. I met with a different level of challenge last 年末年始 (nenmatsunenshi, "end-of-the-year start-of-the-year"), which I spent in a wintry Fukuoka.

The house I stayed in was a solid enough-looking wooden structure, built in 1995. Open space two-story living room with exposed beams combined with sliding paper doors and tatami floor rooms. Wall of glass looking out over the garden. Pretty.

And bitingly cold.

Sometimes around 6 or 7 degrees Celsius in the early morning.

So, how do you cope with this kind of indoor climate?

How do you survive a Japanese house in winter-time?


This picture of the famous Japanese bathing monkeys in Nagano
I have borrowed from wikimedia.org, here.

My research suggest at least five major strategies to be useful.

1. Use multi-layer clothing
   My preferred four-layer combo: short-sleeved T, long-sleeved T, light turtleneck sweater, heavy turtleneck sweater. Long johns if you have them. Slippers and thick, extra socks, of course.
   
   
2. Employ kerosene heaters
   These are your friends. Messy to refill and a bit noisy, but as long as they're burnoing you can feel somewhat uncold. Also good for heating eater and grilling mochi (solid rice flour balls).
   
   
3. Stay near kotatsu tables
   These are lovely things. Equipped with their own heater and attached thick blanket. So cosy. Problem is, they make you incredibly lazy. You never want to leave them. Oh, and don't fart under the kotatsu. Just don't.
   
   
4. Take long, hot baths
   If you don't have your own monkey hot spring, use the thermostat-heated bath that the house is sure to have. It's a good way to drive the chill from your bones. It's just a pity that it's going to be so cold once you get out. Wash before you get in, you're going to share it.
   
   
5. Don't scoff at hot water bottles, or pajamas
   You need them. The bed or futon you'll be sleeping in will have adopted the same freezing temperature as the room, which has probably been closed off during the day. Putting a hot water bottle in there, and your PJs right next to it, makes going to bed less of an ordeal. Thinking ahead is key.

That's it, that's all I can do for you with my limited experience. I'll gratefully receive any tips you might have in return. It might be warm now, but winter is coming. It's coming ...

Goodbye, Messrs. Scholl

When I left Hirakata in May of last year, the sensible Scholl brothers unfortunately couldn't come with me. Their once unremarkable but elegant looks had long since faded, they were taking in water, and like a pampered princess I could feel every grain of sand on the street through what remained of the well-traveled soles. They wouldn't have liked the Japanese summer anyway. Too warm and humid for them. It was time to let go.

Goodbye, Messrs. Scholl. I may have left you in a Burnable bin at Seminar House 3, but you are not forgotten.

Left came back

Switched countries for a while, switched lives.
Back now, fourth prefecture.
No promises, photos may follow.

Changing impressions of Japan

As the semester is about to enter its final week, the time has come to look back and consider how my impressions of Japan might have changed during these past few months.

There are a lot of things actually, but the first thing that leaps to mind is the people. As my language skills have improved (they're still bad) I have become more confident about talking to Japanese that I meet on my walks, and the response has surpassed my expectations. People are overwhelmingly kind, generous and tolerant of my mistake-ridden sentences, and they do their best to answer my often strange questions.

When I came to Japan for the first time some years ago, I thought that Japanese people were supposed to be reserved, but that hasn't been my actual experience at all. This openness might be a Kansai thing, as a lot of Japanese have told me, but I feel like I've been treated the same way in Sapporo, Tokyo and Fukuoka.



Another revelation has been how messy Japan can sometimes be. The rock garden at Ryoan-ji is very stylistically pure and peaceful, but it's not terribly representative of a lot of the Japan that I see around me. The Japan that is cluttered with signs, wires, rusting steel and scruffy-looking apartment buildings.






Before I came here I also expected that Japan would be very new and high-tech. I had read for example, that in big Japanese cities the average lifespan of a building is only around 25 years; that everything is quickly replaced with something newer. In many areas I'm sure that's true, but there are also many examples of the opposite phenomenon - old buildings and stores hanging on. And these places hardly seem to change at all, at least on the outside. They carry the same sign they put up in 1982 or whenever, even if it's worn, faded and totally out of fashion.

I like that. In my home country, the owners would be nervously concerned about what signals they would be sending out if their signs weren't new and pretty. There's an apparent lack of caring about appearances that you often come across outside the major shopping areas that I find refreshing.




This goes for information signs too. I don't know how many rusted or weather-bleached signs I've seen on the streets here. In Sweden they would have been thrown away ages ago, but here they still serve their function. One unit of sign is still one unit of sign, even after wear and tear has made it barely legible anymore, it seems.




I could go on and on, but I need to wrap this up. However, I can't finish without a quick mention of food. When I came to Japan my favorite Japanese food was sushi, but then I really couldn't get much else back in Sweden. Then it was katsudon for a while, but since my time in Sapporo there's one type of food that always fills me with a warm ball of happiness, and this passion has only increased during my semester in Kansai. I am talking of course about ...

PET versus pet

PET bottles. Made of plastic derived from oil, they have some fantastic properties. They can contain fluids with no leakage, they are light, transparent, sturdy and extremely durable. Old ones can be turned into fleece sweaters and with some creative thinking they can be metamorphosed into all manner of other practical things.

They may also be magical.

Something I'm sure many people have noticed and wondered over here in Japan is the sudden appearance on a side street somewhere of a cluster of large, water-filled water bottles secured to the base of a lamp or utility post, or perhaps a group of them stretching single-file along the sidewalk. I've even seen a children's sandbox entirely surrounded by what must have been at least eighty of them once.



Naturally, I've wondered about their purpose. One early theory was a sort of futile-looking, heavily localized fire prevention scheme. Take out those little flames before they spread! Because of their frequent cohabitation with garden plants watering also came up, but was equally quickly dismissed as an explanation.

When I asked around I did get wind of an animal connection.


(Culprit in action. Note broken-down countermeasure in foreground.)

For a long time I let the matter rest, but the other day I finally decided that enough is enough, I must settle this issue. So I went out on a few fact-finding missions in Hirakata and Kyoto. This is what I found.




"They are there to protect the pots from wild cats, there are many of them in Japan," a 60-something woman tells me. "The cats leave their うんち (unchi - shit, feces) in the pots," she explains with a giggle and puts her hand to her mouth. Apparently, the rumors I had heard were correct, the pet bottles are supposed to keep the cats away. How exactly this is supposed to work she doesn't know, and neither does another woman passing by that she enlists for further assistance. "But it's definitely against cats," woman number two agrees.

I can see how that fits with the gardens, but what about the lampposts and installations like the one below?



"They are meant to keep away cats and dogs," explains a 50ish woman that I stop on the street by the above PET altar. She doesn't know exactly how it's supposed to work either, but she does have an interesting theory. Perhaps the bottles' ability to reflect sunlight can scare pets off, cats mostly. Similar to shiny things you hang in trees to keep ravens and other birds away, she suggests.

I can relate to that, since you can now and then see old CD:s dangling from trees in Sweden in an attempt to save some cherries for pie-making. Still seems a little bit like magic though.

She also adds that this is something mainly older people believe in. "Even though PET bottles are new things, the tradition goes a long way back I think."



The heavily protected lampposts now make sense, because what are posts like that to dogs? Message boards for writing on. Fluently.

But does a dog really care all that much about where it does it's posting, I wonder?

Also, I presume that wild dogs are not a major feature of the Japanese urban fauna, but pet dogs on leashes certainly are. So, in order to keep dogs from chatting all over the utility post outside your door, it might be necessary to ward off not the dog itself, but it's controlling owner.

To keep people away however, it seems that you need to combine PET magic with something even more powerful.



This wonderful lamppost I photographed in Kyoto's Demachiyanagi area. Those white symbols look like shrine gates, don't they? In fact, that's just what they are, according to a helpful late 30s woman. "It used to be quite common that people would urinate in public in Japan in the old days," she explained to me in English. "When Japan became more modern, people started feeling that this was not very nice, so they started working to get rid of the habit." Marking previously urination-friendly places with shrine symbols was one creative device used. Who would want to call down damnation on himself for peeing on something holy?

It would seem that someone in Kyoto is still using the method, now adapted to keep dogs and their owners walking right on by.



So, there seems to be a consensus among people I have talked to that PET bottles are deployed to ward off cats and dogs. I have searched for a scientific answer to how this is achieved, but so far this search has been unsuccessful. If anyone else has further knowledge to share, I would love to see it.

Of course, dogs urinating on lampposts is not a laughing matter, as the City of York Council can attest. According to an online article in The Press, a York newspaper, this British town is having to replace 80 street lights per year because of corrosion to their bases, and dog urine is one of the causes. Apparently, neither steel nor concrete can resist its awesome power. Leicester City Council reports the same pressing problem.

But fear not. There may be a solution, and I am proud to announce that it comes from my native Sweden. If PET bottles should prove to be effective only in Japan, some d-level celebrity has taken to promoting Swedish inventor Lennart Järlebro's rubber dog urinals, or so the celebrity press is eagerly reporting anyway. These urinals can, when attached to lampposts, prolong said lampposts' lifespan by up to fifteen years, the inventor claims. Go Sweden!

No pictures of this rubber contraption can be found anywhere, perchance because the product hasn't received a patent yet, but this story from Sweden seems to confirm its existence. Those in great need should keep track of this page, which may or may not be the company page of the celebrity press world famous Swedish inventor.

Abandoned vending machines

I have long had a fascination with abandoned places. Old factories, hospitals, hotels, waste plants, private houses, even entire neighborhoods or towns are sometimes abandoned to the elements, left to slowly decay as nature takes it's toll on them. Here in Japan there is plenty to be seen, as evidenced by this site that a friend directed me to. While I haven't been able to go on any expeditions to abandoned sites in Japan so far, I have discovered a new (for me) sub-genre for the hobby - abandoned vending machines.

While walking near Makino a while back, I came upon a cool little cubic building that looked like an abandoned snack bar (snack bars being a Japanese phenomena worthy of its own entry at some point). I stopped to take some pictures.



Around the corner from the entrance though, I found something that intrigued me even more - an old vending machine for hot and cold drinks. Now, vending machines are of course legion in Japan - there's 1 for every 23 people according to an article at www.japan-guide.com. But this one was clearly from another era and it had been a long, long time since anybody received any liquid satisfaction from it.



Exactly when it was abandoned is naturally hard to say, but we can get pretty close by looking at the sample cans left inside.






Asahi began selling "Nova" coffee (top picture, left) in September 1986 and the name was changed to "J.O." in February 1990. I have to rely on Wikipedia's entry for Asahi soft drinks for this information unfortunately, but I was able to confirm that the famous football player Diego Maradona did in fact do advertising for Nova coffee in the 1980s, as Wikipedia states. "Nova is here!"


(Pictured borrowed from www.advertisingarchives.co.uk)

So, this vending machine was probably abandoned by its owner somewhere during the last years of the 1980s. It has been standing there for at least twenty years. This is one of many things that I find fascinating about Japan - old things are sometimes left around, not always swept away in the latest redesign or renovation as they are in Sweden.

In fact, this machine is like a mini-museum to Japanese vending machine history. It kind of makes me wish someone would take care of it. Most of these drinks probably don't even exist anymore - well, except for Pepsi. And apparently Bireley's may still be available in Japan.



Since that time, I have begun finding more abandoned vending machines on my walks. Perhaps I have some selective perception going on. Anyway, here are a couple of other examples. I'm especially curious about what the game vending machine had to offer.





By the way, I cannot let this post end without mentioning Ikeda san, a Japanese man who has been taking pictures of the same vending machine in Hokkaido for the last five years ... every day. He documents the changes in advertising and drinks offered very carefully. On days when he is away on business trips or just can't go for any reason, his wife takes pictures for him. That's a good wife for you. You can read about him in English here and check out his blog (all Japanese) here.

Adventure Hotel Chapel Coconuts

I spent most of the 1990s in Uppsala, an old university town and power center in Sweden. Uppsala is situated in the middle of a big plain of flat farmland, almost devoid of distinguishing landmarks. Putting some distance between yourself and the town only two features stand out, rising above the low city skyline - the Royal Castle and the Cathedral. Representing worldly and heavenly power, their creators new what they were doing, finding the only hill in the area to build upon. Those two buildings dominate the city, they project their influence over it. They tell us something about what kind of place Uppsala is - or at least what it used to be.

Having spent a lot of time walking around Hirakata, I have come across a building that has the same dominating grip on the surrounding skyline. Easily visible, day or night, it sits atop its hill in resplendent majesty.



At night it is lit up like a beacon. On a sunny day its walls glow bright pink. I am of course talking about the eclectically named Adventure Hotel Chapel Coconuts.



With its palm tree-lined entrances, lively color scheme and exotic bird theme, not to mention its telling price list and room pictures, the Chapel Coconuts is not just any ordinary hotel. Rather, it's a prime example of something many Westerners find fascinatingly curious - the Japanese love hotel.

Before I came to Japan for the first time in 2006, I read a couple of the standard travel guides and checked a lot of web pages. Love hotels often came up in the "only in Japan!" category of must-sees. But I got the feeling from my readings that love hotels were mostly a thing that belonged in the past, a sort of service establishment that was in decline.



How wrong I was. As far as I can see, they are very much alive. Having spent some time walking around Tokyo, Sapporo and Osaka, I have come across gaudy love hotel districts in all three cities, seemingly doing brisk business. According to a January article on The Japan Times Online web site, love hotels are considered such a good investment that there are even special love hotel funds available to investors. As one such investor is quoted as saying, "It's related to one of the three biggest basic human desires, so it's recession-resistant." The article also mentions that some 37 000 of these places are estimated to exist in Japan.

Short-stay hotels are not something that only exists in Japan of course. I have come across them in other places, like Mexico and the U.S. Those were in pretty seedy areas though, and seemed to my untrained eye to be very much geared towards prostitution. That doesn't seem to be the case to the same degree with the Japanese version.



Granted, there were one or two unaccompanied women standing around in a Kyobashi love hotel area when I walked through there a couple of weeks ago, and I have navigated through a tiny, labyrinthine block of love hotels in Iriya, Tokyo, with neon-colored houses and a middle-aged woman waiting around every corner. But a recent Saturday night visit to Namba yielded none of that, only several young couples walking hand-in-hand through the well-delineated block of hotels, checking out the different menus before disappearing into their establishment of choice.

Personally, I've only concerned myself with the outsides of love hotels so far, enjoying their often outrageous design. If Japanzine's very information-packed article (as re-printed on the Quirky Japan Homepage) on love hotels is to be believed though, the insides of these places are changing, away from the garish and crazy towards the more discretely stylish. Giant mirrors, revolving beds, vibrating chairs and weird theme rooms may soon be a thing of the past in most places.



So perhaps it's time to go before these hotels all get gentrified. For the curious, Japanzine has plenty of recommendations and the Osaka area seems especially fruitful. Beware that some of the specific hotel information appears outdated. A quick search showed that JZ favorites such as Gang Snowman and Belles des Belles have already been re-modeled. You can also check out this love hotel listing, "IN ENGLISH!", that looks to be up-to-date.

In the meantime, Adventure Hotel Chapel Coconuts does not seem to have given up on offering the fantastic rather than the sophisticated. The website proudly proclaims that it re-opened in March after a period of renovation, still boasting brightly colored rooms and a sort of theme park ground floor with a giant snake's head and a grotto feel. And the exotic birds and dolphins are all still there.



For a Canadian honeymooning couple's report on their stay in a love hotel, see this news article from The Globe and Mail: "There's nothing like standing in a hotel devoted exclusively to sex and staring at a black-lit mural of humpback whales to give you the sensation that you are in a different country."

The latest Japanzine Magazine, with articles in English about what's going on in Japan, can be downloaded for free here.