Snow Country

For those of you who aren't aware, in 1996 Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata wrote a book about Niigata - the prefecture I call currently call home. The title of the book, you ask? "Snow Country". Evidently that book was not set in my area of Niigata (which is still totally bare), rather the southern areas of Joetsu and Yuzawa which have the highest snowfall in the world on that latitude (around D.C. area). And as I found out this weekend have already been totally dumped on!




I snapped these pictures while I was driving down to Yuzawa to go boarding on Sunday. It was crazy... when I left Maki it was crisp and sunny, and within an hour south on the Kanetsu Expressway, it was cloudy and snowy and driving was bad news. I can't comprehend the extreme differences in weather conditions between these two areas... and I can't control my jealousy for the people who live down there who can hit the slopes after school.

Anyway, I thought I'd give my two loyal readers who aren't in Japan (aka, not Aaron... or Kristen for that matter) a little peak into the ridiculous conditions of the Japanese winter.

For all the hype Japan gets for being this technologically-advanced country, they certainly skimp on a lot of things we take for granted, like central heat and insulation. I do have a heated toilet seat in my apartment though, go figure. So, in no particular order, here are the random things that make winter in Niigata livable:

My kerosene heater. Only the most ghetto folks in America use these things. They smell, they're dangerous, it's a pain in the ass to get kerosene from the gas station. But it's cheap (1200yen for one of those big red tank things) and it freakin works. It also has a timer so I can set it to turn on 30 minutes before I get up and before I get home so it's nice and toasty when I need it.


This little halogen heater packs a big punch for its size. I keep this in my bathroom so it'll be relatively warm when I brush my teeth/wash my face and most importantly, get out of the shower.



This big thing runs off electricity so it's expensive and it doesn't actually work that well. I leave it on overnight while I sleep so combined with the heat from my electric blanket it seems to do the job.


Heating pads. I stick one of these to the shirt under my sweater when I go to school. No, there's no central air at school either -- the halls and the lunch room are absurdly cold. My students probably wear like 600 of these a day since the girls wear skirts and they all walk/bike to school. Japanese kids are freakin champs.
I also stick them to the bottoms of my feet in my snowboarding boots.


And finally, my trusty snowboard and my new snowboarding buddy, Aaron. Funny that I lived through like 20 winters in Upstate NY and never had a need to pick this up, but I'm glad I got forced into it last year. It's gonna be the only thing to do every weekend. Weeeee!

Good thing Niigata has tons and tons of resorts to explore!