After talking to some of my teachers a while back, and reading just today in my Japanese textbook, the first day of spring for Japan was officially February 4th – halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Why spring doesn’t begin on the spring equinox, I do not know. I also heard about an event called Setsubun (literally: the transition of one season to the next), which is held the day before spring. For the event people eat soybeans for good health – usually as many beans as you are old. People also toss roasted soybeans around houses, schools, and shrines while shouting “Out with the demons! In with good fortune!” The tradition is called “mame maki” (bean scattering) and is meant to, surprise, drive away evil demons and bring good fortune.Unfortunately, I guess my students are too old, or too mature, or too busy for such traditions because I didn’t get to see any of this during setsubun. One teacher recommended that I sneak away to a shrine during school to see it, but I think I was too busy that day.
Anyway, the point of this is that spring has officially been in Japan for over a month now, and it had just finally begun to warm up over the last few days. I think that on Saturday, I was home for most of the day, and I didn’t use my kerosene heater at all until later in the evening – something I haven’t been able to do since probably the end of November. It was an odd sensation to be in my apartment, and for everything around me to feel generally warm. I mentioned a few months back that Japanese apartments don’t have any central heating or insulation. Instead they rely on kerosene heaters for most homes, and sometimes electric heaters for others. I’m usually warm in my apartment, but the apartment itself is never completely warm – especially the side of the apartment where my toilet and shower are. At night, it’s not recommended to run the kerosene heater while sleeping, and it usually starts making loud beeping sounds and then turns off after a few hours anyway. Instead I sleep under about 3 thick comforters. It’s only the first 10 or 15 minutes of everyday where I feel really, really cold; my thermostat in the apartment usually reads somewhere around 3-7 degrees in the mornings.
Despite how ridiculous this probably sounds to people back home, people who are used to always having a warm home, I’ve kind of gotten used to it. It even makes sense to me in some regards. Basically, Japanese people don’t bother heating the rooms in their house that they aren’t using – and they don’t bother to heat them when they’re not there either. When I wake up and when I come home, my apartment is cold, because for the 6-10 hours or whatever that I’m sleeping or away, I don’t really need to be heating my apartment. In the Japanese homes that I’ve been to, families will heat the room that they are in, close the door, and the rest of the house stays cold – because there’s nobody using it. I’m not saying that I’m not looking forward to a warm house next winter, but before coming to Japan, I would leave the house for a day, or even a couple of days, and I wouldn’t think to turn the heat off before leaving.
I had two days of beautiful sunshine over the weekend and I didn’t need to use my heater, and then, Sunday night it snowed and today was again, very cold. Spring is almost half over – before I know it, it’ll be snowing in the summer.
To be fair, these photos were taken from the last time it snowed here a few weeks ago. Most of the snow was gone when I woke up this morning.
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