Patricia Loison's winter in Japan
The cold that pierces the walls
Journalist Patricia Loison gives us her impressions of Japan's harsh winter.
It was while strolling through the rooms open to all winds of the Engyoji temple , perched for a thousand years at the top of Mount Shosha , that I sensed what winter could be like in Japan.
The wooden panels open at regular intervals, large, on the outside, the forest, the cemetery. The stylists of the decoration pages of ELLE and Madame Figaro are urgently needed! Drape these windows - without glass! - in velvet to seal them.
Set up at least one chair to curl up in. Pile the rugs on the floor.
The cold pierces the socks.
As in any Japanese place, please take off your shoes before entering, even by minus five degrees. The air currents follow you, ahead of you, throughout your wanderings in this austere palace where Tom Cruise finds refuge in The Last Samurai .
"Before the modern era, Japanese women layered up to eight outfits in an attempt to retain some warmth!" confides to us the secretary general of the French Institute of Kyoto. Well, let's grasp this thread of history, a few centuries later nothing has changed!
Zen temple or expat villa, nothing has changed! My American neighbor doesn't leave her kitchen, which she walks around in a down jacket.
You map your interior into thermal zones .
Living room: heated: 20°C.
Input: no heating: 10°C.
Toilets: manual heating possible, via a "toaster" format hatch. No need to trigger it. Instead, savor the heated Japanese bezel, which comes into its own in winter!
You discover the true meaning of the local mantra: "Living with the seasons" .
It's not: open your window in the spring and smell the scent of cherry blossoms. But rather, your house is made of paper, you will be cold in winter, hot in summer, in war as in war.
As a result, we, the parts brought back to the archipelago, brought up in the warm heat of the radiator and the central heating, we wonder.
How can a country that has long been at the forefront of innovation not insulate its constructions? Let the glass, a few millimeters thick, constantly cool your rooms. The heat blown by the inverted air conditioners – try standing under your hair dryer for an hour or two… – evaporating through the wooden partitions?
Hard to cook for some, ancestral way of life for others, very protected building market for still others...
In the meantime, it's an experience , and a vein!
We pass pipes between refrigerated neighbors. The oil radiator to shop on the net. The duvet-coat – husbands get used to it, they do n't get too far either! – at Uniqlo or Ikéa.
Glove or shoe warmers, small chemical sachets to slip into mittens or under the sole. I ended up finding them in the famous " 100 yen shop ", the stores where everything is displayed at 1€.
Carefully packaged in their orange-yellow box, in the colors of the promised warmth. I tested them in the gloves for my daily walks with man's best friend. The impression of having a mini radiator in each palm. Happiness !
One morning, frozen in front of the French window of my office, I gave in. I went to take one out of the drawer in the hall cabinet, I stuck it behind my back, taped with Elastoplast. When the heat began to spread, I was finally able to work in relative comfort.
Be careful if you repeat the experience: you can burn yourself leaning on the back of the chair, forgetting this pocket hot water bottle.
In the morning, at home, at the office, everyone's first action is to turn on their forced-air heater.
My husband goes behind to turn down the thermostat, his eye riveted on the electricity bill which is blowing up the budget. The children fight back, wrapped in their blankets for breakfast.
Each degree is a battle.
"21°C is reasonable!"
" But Daddy, we're freezing!"
"It's impossible, who left their heating at 26°C? If it's like that, we won't go to winter sports !"
Room humidifiers are a hit. Water drop design, fragrant essential oils. Objective: counteract ultra-dry pulsed air.
A single word, makes the most reluctant to winter Japanese life give way, those who think that next door, January in Montreal, it's a joke...:
" Kotatsu "
It could only be invented here. A coffee table, a radiator glued underneath, skirting all around to keep the heat in, a blanket.
The plus: you are no longer cold. The least: you risk hibernating all winter.
And to miss out on a few pleasures: Japanese smoked tea to swallow in small sips to warm up after a walk. Invigorating winter dishes that are the joys of après-ski: pot au feu, noodles… And a snub to the biting cold, offered on a platter by volcanic nature: the onsen .
Natural hot water baths.
It is particularly tasty when the temperature stings a little, to slip into water at forty degrees, occasionally wiping a snowflake that falls on your nose when the baths are outside. Magical !
In everyday life, hot water also provides its virtues. Everyone here knows that having a bath run in the morning is not only delicious but helps to defrost the bathroom in record time! Not very ecological… certainly, but as we also say “ Gambatte! ”, “fight” with the means at hand .
See you soon under the spring sun that we are waiting for... impatiently!
