Everybody told me that winter in Kyoto is particulary nasty - it chills you to the bone. I've experienced temperatures in my life that would make the people living in here freeze on the spot, but still living in an old house with thin walls is quite difficult. For a country so technologically advanced, you will have problems with heating and paying with credit cards in Japan. There have to be some drawbacks, right?
During the night temperature drops to about -2 Celsius degrees, and without heating it's enough to make you uncomfortable. The Japanese use different methods to warm up; gas stoves, fan heaters, air conditioning, electric blankets... I lived in the blissfull world of central heating all my life, so I never knew how to keep myself warm like that. I have an electric futon in my room, but while it was all right in November, it's too cold just with that now, so I took the ceramic fan heater from the cellar.
But how to heat a 70 square-meter room with nothing but a meager portable heater? Not to mention that there are gaping cracks in the old-fashioned windows (which have only one layer of glass, instead of two like in Poland) and when the wind blows just a little bit they rattle and wake me up. I will not even mention waking up and changing clothes in such conditions (the clothes are also ice-cold) - you just don't want to get out of the futon in the morning.
So yesterday I did some laundry and decided to put my clothes in my wardrobe (which is probably bigger than some flats in Kyoto; about 15 square meters. I sometimes envy the people in those warm, cozy flats...), close the doors and put the fan inside to dry everything quickly; it turned out that the wardrobe is well-isolated and it takes just a few minutes to warm it inside with my little heater. I had an epiphany - from this day forth I shall sleep in my wardrobe!
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