Japan and the cold!

Ok, so I am very cold in my apartment at the mo, and was therefore inspired to write a little bit about the cold in Japan! Japan really isn't any colder than the UK in winter...probably a bit milder even! However, there is a problem; the inability of the Japanese to understand the concept of insulation! Take my apartment for example. It's a really nice apartment; big rooms, gorgeous wooden floors, tatami floors in the bedrooms, and frosted glass sliding doors! Ooh nice, you might be thinking? Ooh, Lauren you've fallen on your feet to get a nice apartment like that!...And yes, I am lucky...it is a fab apartment, and I pay a pitiful amount for it (thanks to JET subsidised accommodation). However, now it's winter...the floors all feel icy cold, the big rooms are drafty, and the useless sliding doors to not keep any nice bit of warmth in a room! The walls are really thin...and therefore, whatever temperature it is outside, its pretty much the same inside my apartment! I sleep in my pjs, my old uni hoody, long fleecy socks, a sleeping bag, a duvet, and a blanket!

I tried asking one of my Japanese English teachers about this a while ago, but she really couldn't understand the idea of having insulation, and she certainly had no clue what I was talking about when I mentioned double glazing!!!!!! She explained that in Japan, they like to use heated carpets (large rugs to put on the floors which plug in and heat up!), electric blankets, and the kotatsu (a table which you put a cover over, and you plug the table in, and it heats up...families sit with their legs under them, while eating dinner!). I have a kotatsu, but is certainly no substitute for just having walls with a decent thickness!

In a country, which is soooo advanced in so many ways; electrical gadgets galore, an enviable train system (the fast bullet train goes up to 300 KM/H!...and the trains are always on time!), and electric-heated toilet seats being a norm in family households; it is so confusing and contradictory, that Japan cannot introduce simple ideas like double gazing and central heating. As my apartment was also sweltering hot in the summer, I can only assume that Japanese houses (at least in my part of the country anyway!), are built to make you sweat in summer, and shiver in winter.......And dont even get me started on the ridiculous kerosene heaters that they expect you to use in winter!! Im sticking to electric!