It is cold

January flew by! Luckily, it wasn`t too cold with only a week or so of really bad weather.

Since hitting February it has gotten freezing- was -8C this morning and living in an apartment that has no insulation means it is cold inside too.

I usually heat my house with an old style Kerosene heater which, despite smelling funny, warms the house up quite quickly. This is especially great in the morning. I wake up, hit the on button, put my clothes in front of it to warm up before I get dressed and then do some bits and bobs around the house. By the time I have finished it is nice and toasty so I can get changed comfortably.

This morning, however, the kerosene had run out. I turned the aircon heating on but it made barely and difference and desperately tried to warm my clothes by putting them under my kotatsu (a low table with a heating element on the bottom). It was horrendous and meant that I took forever to get ready as I just didn`t want to take of my snug dressing gown. There was even ice on the INSIDE of my windows and my toothpaste had started to freeze (damn me for mocking the other JETs that this had already happened to). From now on I am making sure I have fuel for the heater.

This was the first time that I felt very appreciative of the fact that I don`t live in the parts of Japan that have really cold winters. An hours drive over the mountain that I live by and you get to at least a meter of snow and minus temperatures all winter long. I even heard a story about someones entire toilet bowl freezing over.