What Happened When Pigs Flu

‘Attention all teachers. Attention all teachers,’ tinned through every single speaker in Shounan High School, just after the 3d period bell had exhausted itself. ‘Please relocate yourselves to the Teachers’ Room at your earliest convenience which is now.’ The students became jittery. Electricity pulsed through the room. A meeting during the day, between periods, was unheard of. Something big was afoot, and between rumors floated from other schools or hearsay from friends of cousins twice and thrice removed, everyone had the Hope.
The Hope was that we were in a new era of terror and panic, danger and destruction, which, besides bringing society down to its knees, would throw even the farthest rural regions of Iwate back seven hundred years to a time of clans and weapons, hunting and gathering, bands of scoundrels and flocks of vagabonds and gaggles of miscreants, threaten to destroy mankind, and would also cancel school for four days.
‘Derek Teacher! Derek Teacher!’ a pull on my red fleece signaled that I would be escorted by students all the way to the Teachers’ Room. ‘Is it true? Are we going to miss school?’ I feigned ignorance of the Japanese language, even as more appeared as if from nowhere to block my path with questions that I didn’t have answers to. When the beasts want blood, you have to give it to them.
‘Ask Yo Sensei! He’ll know.’ We call that the shovel pass, primarily because you dig your friend’s grave. 14 expensive and well-manicured coiffures snapped to Yo Sensei. And then they were on him. As I ran away I could see the horror on his face turn to rage for just a moment as he looked at me. But, I’d like to think that there was also a hint of respect there. It’s not every day you see the shovel pass executed to such devastating account.
The Teacher’s Room was safe haven. Like vampires who are not invited into a house and thus can not enter, Japanese students are somehow bound by social conditioning force fields. Without a bow and a formal request to enter granted, the students can do nothing but pine and sometimes claw at the door. But we can still hear them outside, scratching, talking, plotting. Even though they can’t enter, we have to leave some time, and they know that. ‘Didn’t you have class with Yo Sensei? Where is he?’ Five pairs of weary teaching eyes turned towards me.
‘It was ugly, but he died with honor.’ Lie.
‘I’m sure he did. He’ll be remembered.’ Lie. The five pairs turned away. The principal was ready to speak. I am no interpreter, and I am no steel trap of remembrance. What follows is what I believe to be a fairly decent, if not subdued, representation of the principal’s speech.
‘Holy shit, you’re all going to fucking die, but I might make it out of here if the helicopters come this far north. The prime minister is already in a bunker under Guam, presumably eating white rice with Mr. Obama, who is eating bread. I humbly received a letter of recommended instructions to be carried out exactly as written from the head of Iwate Prefecture’s Board of Education. Before I get to that, here is what we know so far, from reports that have been coming in from overseas and Tokyo, center of lust and hedonism, but Disney World is cool and so is Mt. Fuji. The debatably worst virus in the world in debatably four years is somehow spreading. Eight weeks ago, some pig had it in Mexico, and now there is a man in Sendai who is reporting that he has it too. Now, get ready to have your minds god-damn blown. This man has never met that Mexican pig. This man didn’t even know where Mexico was. And, the pig had no idea where Sendai was. We asked it.
‘Somehow, mysteriously, in a manner that we understand completely, the virus is passing from person to person invisibly, almost as if we can’t see it. History tells us that there is not a whole lot we can do besides stay calm and weather the storm, but I say that history needs to get its shit together because it’s clearly living in the past.
‘Scientists from many countries, including our own, have confirmed that people who are already sick, or weak, or young, or generally more likely to succumb to illness because of a pre-existing condition are in actuality getting sick at a higher rate than healthy adults. Who would have thought this completely rational explanation would make the slightest amount of sense? But it does, if you stop to think about it for less than a second.
‘Those same scientists have gone on further to outline two courses of action that we can take. First, let the disease sweep through. Only the strong, weak, very weak, obese, healthy, tall, short, light skinned, dark skinned, malnourished, bulimic, anorexic, filthy, poor, rich, middle class, upper middle class, lower middle class, welfare recipients, athletes, singers, songwriters, singer/songwriters, writers, novelists, novellaists, cellists, bellists, and bulls amongst us will survive. It’ll be a trying winter, with fewer bad days than good, but the disease will run its course and go away. The other course of action is to try and confine the disease, that is, rob it of the fuel it needs to consume in order to live and spread, namely our souls. There would be zero tolerance for anyone who shows the slightest hint of the disease, be it imagined, created, contrived, or real. They would be quarantined to save the others. In concrete terms, if even one person in a homeroom class gets it, we send that whole class home for four days. No exceptions. The only options are stifle completely, or accept with caution. The scientists are sure of this.
‘Without any medical training whatsoever, our leaders at the Board of Education have decided to ignore the smart people and take the middle ground of the two extremes, thereby enabling us to use the contradictory and cancelling advantages of both plans simultaneously negating them. That being said, we will establish a rule of 10 percent, and it shall be our Golden Rule. If any homeroom class reaches 10 percent diseased, that entire class will be sent home. Our homerooms are about 40 strong, so if 4 students get the symptoms, the whole class has to go home immediately, to prevent contact with others, by public transportation, probably together with their classmates. In addition, if a grade reaches 10 percent, whether or not all 10 percent come from the homeroom is irrelevant. The whole grade will go home for four days. No exceptions! Well, besides students who have an important test coming up, or besides athletes who have important competitions coming up against schools from big cities where the rate of disease is much higher. In addition, all teachers will remain at school, even if all the students are at home.’
The principal’s speech restored order. We had a plan, and that’s all that really matters. The details of any plan are unimportant next to the significance of having a plan in place. We felt buttressed by the Japanese government, and 8,000 years of tradition, to fight against a force that was not understood until about fifty years ago.

The Hope amongst students continues to grow. They all know about the 10 percent rule, and seem to be rooting for their classmates to catch the disease. I have a feeling that some are actively seeking the disease, but I don’t have the proof yet… I had the good fortune of being in a class when a ‘fourth student’ returned. Even the teacher stopped as Kumi walked in through the door. Kumi lifted her head, smiled, and said, ‘I have the flu.’ I had never been to Mardi Gras in Brazil until I was in homeroom 3-2 on November 20th.
The 10 percent rule is madness to me. Either send everyone home right away, or just let it ride. Splitting the middle will only extend the problem, I think. It’s winter. People get the flu all the time. It’s not a big deal. I had it last week. Yes, that’s right, I had H1N1, the new pig flu. And, if you were a Japanese public school teacher you might be worried about reading something that someone with the flu wrote for fear of transmission. I’ve been to work through a lot worse. I was unimpressed by this strain, but my school made me take off the entire week even though I was literally begging them to let me back early.
Along with the Hope comes the Fear. There is quite a bit of panic in the Iwate school system. Many people are wearing masks, even if they aren’t sick. Three or four day school trips to Kyoto and Tokyo, the high point of many students’ high school careers, are being cancelled because of the fear of entering into an ‘Influenza den.’ Younger teachers who leave Iwate for, god forbid, pleasure, are questioned and sometimes chided by their older colleagues. ‘Are you sure it’s safe to run around Japan at a time like this? Is that really being responsible on your part? What if you bring it back?’ But we all know it’s coming no matter what we do.
We’re not even in the coldest months of the year yet, when people crank the gas heaters that dry out the air which strip your body of its mucus protection. It hasn’t even snowed in Iwate and already people are running for the hills. It’s only going to get worse, or better, if you like comedy, before too long.

First Annual Shiwa Fest 2009

Oh my god, I can't believe you guys missed Shiwa Fest '09! It was the best friggin' one yet! There were all these bands there that totally kicked ass and transcended us into some astral music/love festival bubble thing. The night was forever and gone in the same instant, and I saw dimensions bounded only by their unapproachable limits, the smallest ones doubling as the biggest if only you'd turn your head ever so slightly to the left. Colors and fabrications blew away and all that was left was emotion. I could see emotion. It was this purply kind of velvety sof- wait, not purply, there wasn't any color. It's like I knew it was purple but I couldn't see the color purple. I just wanted to jump into this velvety tasseled road and ride away from it all into the blackness, and I would have, but everybody started dancing and I got bumped back into this. Shiwa Fest is the closest any man has ever come to the beginning of time. Yeah, so what if I was wasted at 5 30 pm on a Sunday? Monday was a day off, Mr. Man, so back up. Plus, we were internationating. It's totally western culture to pound some beers in a public restroom and then internationalize all up on people, Amurrican style. Ughhhh!

Anyway, it started with this guy.

He was 'eh,' at best. He was playin' by himself as people walked in. He probably begged someone just to get on stage, and the headliners probably felt sorry for him. I will say that he played a pretty mean Badfish, and his blues free-style thing wasn't so bad. But he totally messed up that bubbly-toesy Jack Johnson song and stopped halfway through Blackbird. Who does that? He looked nervous. But who wouldn't be, for Shiwa Fest '09, knowing that as soon as he was done the big dogs would come out and totally rock his shit.

Unfortunately, the next band, which was a Japanese lead singer/bassist girl named Azusa (totally cute) and her drummer boyfriend (some American punk) and this wicked awesome Japanese guitarist named Manabu rocked so hard that they actually made an EMP with all their rockage and blew out all the cameras for their three song Hawaiian 6 cover set. Moving right along. Next came THE CREW.

Oh my god they were friggin awesome.

The drummer (Matt) was all tat tat tat tatty tat tat ttt-tat ttt-tat ttt-tat bch bch and then he came down on the crash hard, like splitting a friggin red wood, you know what I'm sayin, like KABLAM while I swear the kick drum rang like a gong. Look at this animal!

Ok, well, he looks kinda dreamy in that picture, but that's only because he knows that he's on camera. He doesn't allow just anyone to see him in his rawness. But, the guitarist (Derrreick). Oh hell yeah.

Shredding like he hadn't eaten in a year. And with a voice like a bird.

And the bassist (Eric) had lasers for eyes! He is a bassist robot sent from the future to destroy rock and roll as you know it. He also destroyed seven people in the crowd. True story.

Then, the bassist dropped out after they finished the music-revolutionizing originals and the guitarist and the drummer did an hour of Whitestripes stuff. If only the drummer woulda worn a skirt like Meg White...

MORE! PLEASE! GIVE ME MORE OF THAT ROCK AND ROLL %&*T!

YES! DANCE TESTERS!

Then, when they had finished rocking our faces off, the cool bastards actually came down from their higher dimension and partied with us like regular folk! They feel like the rest of us. They hurt like the rest of us. They boast like the rest of us. They drink beer like the rest of us. They scream like the rest of us. And in the same order too...

Especially when their bassist boy is now rockin' the guit-box with his band and his originals. It was amazing. He re-revolutionized what the other band not an hour before had revolutionized. I almost shot myself right there because I knew life could never get any sweeter.

And then, as he held the last chord and the drum skidded to an abrupt halt, color returned and I knew that I would never be the same.

True Stats -

People blown up - 0

Number of laser eyes bassist possesses - 0

Location - Shiwa City Center, capacity - 1,200

Attendance - pushing 25

Attendance by people who I didn't know - 12? maybe?

Chairs set up (because it's Japan) - 70

Crowd size be damned, it was exhilarating, and I, like the attendee who wrote this account, will never be the same.

Genius Loves Company Benefits

My desk in the teacher’s room is the farthest away, in pure radial reckoning, from the vice-principal’s desk, which is the emotional epicenter of the room – the nerve center. I sit at the end of a block of desks, hidden from view by a column. Besides a few teachers who smile at me as they walk by or politely say ‘hello,’ or ‘goodbye,’ I don’t get a lot of unprovoked interaction action. If I walk up to someone and start talking, or flag a teacher down on her way by my desk, we might talk for seconds, perhaps even minutes, at a time. But, the ball is always in my court, it would seem.

Sitting in my corner of solitude with an encompassing view of all the other desks in the room, I have observed that my situation is a tad unique. Other teachers (not all mind you, but a substantive majority) indeed interact with each other on a more regular basis, and what’s more, the average interaction time of an interaction event is substantially longer. I have also noticed that there appears to be more laughing sub-events and general jocularity in the larger interaction event.

I wondered, naturally, if my physical position in the room was responsible for my paucity of interaction events. After all, the strength of many interaction forces in this world, electromagnetic and gravitational, for example, weakens as the distance between the players grows. Perhaps I too was subject to some inverse square law. That theory was quickly laid to rest, however, when I observed that the teacher seated directly to my right, and thus not all that much radially closer to the epicenter, consistently ranked in the top 3 in overall interaction events and in the top 7 in average length of interaction time, while some teachers much closer to the epicenter hardly broke the top 20.

If radial distance is not the culprit, I mused, surely there must be something else in my situation that dictates my dearth of interaction events. For months I puzzled over why a mid-20s, often gregarious, white male with limited Japanese language knowledge was not approached more often by his generally mid-40s, Japanese co-workers who have functioned in a predominantly homogeneous and historically wary of foreign influences society their whole lives, most of whom speak no English and are extremely busy all the time. In time I discovered the reason, and I’ll admit that I was surprised that I had not come up with it much earlier. It’s quite simple really. My co-workers shy away from me because I am a genius.

The vast majority of teachers must need climb the Tower of Knowledge to become an expert in their field, and the road up is fraught with 864 steps of loose boards, slippery boards, uneven spacings, giant gaps, riddle toting trolls, and enticing yet ultimately dead end detours. The view at the top is certainly stunning, but perhaps a little bittersweet as well, because the new expert must share the roof of the tower with the geniuses, or genii, who have already been helicopter-dropped at the top. The genii have no blisters on their feet from climbing, no scars from close encounters with trolls, and they certainly didn’t waste years of their life climbing. It also doesn’t help that genii are often socially inept and so bound to say something like, ‘Wow, this thing sure is high!’ and ‘Boy I’m glad I didn’t have to climb it.’ What’s even worse is when genii change their minds, or realize they overlooked something. At that point, they call up the helicopter and shuttle off to the next Tower, leaving a roof-full of disgruntled and probably suicidal and homicidal experts at the top of a condemned building.

Genii have some otherworldly ability to reveal and coax correct answers without so much as lifting a finger. They just know, which is incredibly frustrating to everyone else because often a genius can not explain his reasoning. An expert will go back to the books, dust off the tomes, question the witnesses, calculate and recalculate, and, finally, prove the genius’ clairvoyance. At which point he will return to the genius and say, ‘Behold! I have done it! Your answer is correct, but here is why! Here is the proof!’ The genius doesn’t care, though. He knew the answer to begin with. Then, the genius says something like, ‘Oh, I see what you did there,’ pointing to a double reverse quadrahedical anti-gravity cylindronal derivegral, known only to eight mathematicians and select goat-herders in Timubuktu, who themselves use complex flute harmonics instead of supercomputers to solve the same problem unknowingly. The genius continues, ‘That’s cute,’ as his donut crumbs and powdered sugar sprinkle the pristine report.
But, the expert can not offend or rid himself of the genii because the expert needs the genius too much. Experts, for the most part, really are concerned with the progress of knowledge, and the continuing expansion of understanding and truth. You certainly don’t climb 864 perilous steps if you aren’t genuinely invested in what’s at the top. The expert knows that a genius can push the universal understanding in leaps and bounds, bettering everyone. It’s much easier, after all, for the expert to get somewhere if he knows where he is supposed to go. Generally, the genius can give the destination, if not the path, sort of like Google Maps but without the driving directions feature.

I am an English genius. Through no special exertions, I possess an ability sought after by governments and institutions world-wide. I can look at an English sentence and immediately tell whether it is correct or not. And, what’s more, (please sit down if you are faint of heart reader) if the sentence is incorrect, I can fix it. The really crazy part is that often I don’t know why the sentence is right or wrong. I just know! This English thing is just something that I’ve been able to do as far back as I can remember.

Unfortunately, this mastery of English seems to be affecting my socializing opportunities in the work place. I have a feeling that my co-workers hesitate to disrupt me for fear of interrupting a ‘genius at work.’ I've noticed that my co-workers also can't seem to find the words, or the courage, to talk to the Korean genius and the Chinese genius either. And it is not that their fears are without foundation. If you interrupt a genius whilst he is on the cusp of formulating an idea and the idea vanishes accidentally, you might have just set humanity back decades or even centuries. Even so, I feel like I am being punished for wielding a power I never chose to bear. Would that I could, I would pass this on to someone else. As it is, I try to be as patient as I can with others who don’t have the Gift, but I fear that sometimes my frustrations might show through.

‘Excuse me, Sensei... Do you have a minute?’ she asks, barely audible.
‘Yes my child. What have you brought for me?’ I answer.
‘Oh, it’s really nothing. I can come back. It seems that you are working on something, yes? I would be loath to disturb your work. Although, if I may ask, what is it?’ she asks, awed by the convoluted pattern of boxes and scrawls on my computer screen, drawn to the fact that she recognizes the individual letters but can’t understand the meaning they have when arranged in such an unusual manner. But clearly, it is exciting.
‘Well, actually, this is not original work, but more of an exercise puzzle that another English genius has created for me. Often, we geniuses like to keep each other sharp by posing thought experiments to one another. This particular trial is a unique blend of quite advanced English grammar and vocabulary, which by itself is trivial for me, but when coupled with American cultural and historical references, as well as differential non-linear thought patterns, becomes mildly intriguing. We call it a ‘shared dual collisional apogee amalgam.’’
‘Amazing. And I suppose this up here is a shorter name for it,’ she says, pointing feebly at the screen.
‘Ummm… Yes. Yes, quite right.’
‘It seems that you are almost done with this…this… c-c-ross w-w-wor-rd po-poozle.’
‘Yes. I am. Actually I would probably be finished by now if it hadn’t been for you.’
‘Oh my goodness! I’m so sorry. I’ll come back later,’ she backs away and turns to scurry but I stop her with a wave of my hand.
‘You mean you don’t even want to know the answer to your question?’
‘What do you mean? How could you…I don’t understand… I haven’t asked yet,’ she stammers.
‘The answer of course is, ‘a three inch long worm,’ and not, ‘a three inches long worm.’ Don’t put an ‘es’ at the end of inch.’
‘I see. But what if I said, ‘that worm is three inches long!’ That is correct, isn’t it?!’ she pleads.
‘Yes, in that case you must add the ‘es.’
‘But, ‘That is a three inches long worm’ is not OK?!’
‘Precisely.’
She exhales and composes herself. Then she asks the question which even I can not answer. ‘But, why?’
‘NO NO! STOP RIGHT THERE! I can not be bothered with explanations and trivialities! Don’t waste my time with this nonsense! You have your answer. It’s 100 percent correct. Be happy with that!’
‘But, I, h-how did you know my question?’ she squeaks through.
‘I read it on the paper in your hand right there.’
Amazed, she looks at the paper and realizes for the first time the scope of my power, but still just the tip of the iceberg. ‘You read my note and anticipated the question? Even though my hand was blocking some of the letters? And then you discovered the answer in the three minutes I was here, while we talked about crossword puzzles?!’
‘My child,’ I smile to her and extend my hand. ‘It took far less than three minutes. Upon sight I knew the answer to your query. I can’t expect you to understand this power that I have, but I hope you can accept it. Now leave me. Your question has been answered. And now I must return to thinking of a word that has 7 letters and is related to ‘famous louvered windows of the French Renaissance.’

My Birthday Present This Year? A Pain in the Neck

Babies danced in mud, laughing, waving, kicking, and, perhaps most troubling to me, sinking. Fortunately, their parents were there to pop them out, wipe the rain drops away from their yellow hats and set them moving again. My friend got kicked in the ear, another got kicked in the nose, and I got punched in the neck. Then, we high-fived and hugged the culprits. A man poured a beer on a stranger to the left, and the stranger mouthed ‘OH HELL YEAH!’ People said things in incomprehensible tongues and were rewarded with applause and cheers so thunderous you would have thought they had just won the Olympics, all of it.

Earlier in the day I waited 30 minutes in line for the privilege of using a toilet completely covered in shit. With every step I took towards the foul box I came a little bit closer to vomiting, but I liked it! Yet earlier, when I woke up, soaked head to toe in rain water as were all of my possessions, I smiled.

But you would too if you were at Fuji Rock ’09, palace of dreams, trying to raze a mountain range in Niigata, Japan, along with the likes of Franz Ferdinand, Oasis, Basement Jaxx, Weezer, JET, Animal Collective, Dinosaur Jr., Jimmy Eat World, Public Enemy, Ben Harper, Zazen Boys, and 150,000 other maniacs.

Of course it wasn’t all blood and baby carnage. On Saturday, when it wasn’t raining, I took my time strolling around the 7 scattered stages in the mountains and perusing the list of 200 bands scheduled to perform. I saw a wooden walkway leading into a darkness of dense trees and I took it. Dim light bulbs shielded by maps of famous cities (what the hell was Newark, New Jersey doing there?) ensured that I didn’t fall off the winding platform and into the abyss. While walking, some gentle, natural, tunes massaged my ears, urging me to pick up pace and follow. I did, and I was rewarded by a tiny little stage occupied by a tiny little woman making sounds that were too intriguing to pass by. Apparently others had also heard the intrigue because there they were, seated on tree stumps or with their backs against trees, trying to figure out how this one woman could have 4 different voices She was actually looping her voice and then singing over it, but whatever... Juana was her name, and the sounds were Spanish.

When I went to buy my lamb gyro from a vendor, I was taken aback when he, a very large black man, spoke to me in very soft Japanese. I ordered two gyros for 14 dollars and got three for 15. Whatever. Then, armed with three halves of our expected gyro consumption, my friend and I sat, legs dangling in a river that runs through the mountains and thus between stages. We ate and then washed off the mud that was caked to our legs and shoes. The water was cold, and even colder when two Japanese dudes came up behind us and pushed us into the river, laughing the whole time.

I met a Japanese guy who also loves JET (the band, not my job), and together we sang every single word of almost every single song (even the line that goes ‘don’t wanna hold hands or talk about our little plans ALL RIGHT), right in time with whoever is the lead singer of JET. When the last power chord dissolved into the rain, and my ears came out of shock, I expressed my enthusiasm appropriately (‘SHIT YEAH’ was I believe the route I chose) and asked him if he had ever seen JET live before. He shrugged his shoulders and in Japanese told me that he didn’t speak any English at all. Besides, of course, every JET song. Whatever.

The marquee names were on the big stage, the Green Stage, capacity 60,000. I was right up front for both Saturday and Sunday nights’ main events, Franz Ferdinand and Weezer, respectively. Franz Ferdinand absolutely rocked my face off. I liked the band alright before, but their live show was stupendous and the singer put on an impromptu techno dance party with his ‘techno machine’ (I don’t know the technical term) at the end of their set. When I say the live show was stupendous, I don’t mean it had explosions or dancers or bears on bicycles and tigers on trampolines or ablazing lions set to jumping through hoops. I mean it was just four guys who seemed genuinely happy to be there playing their hearts out, no gimmicks (yeah, I’m talking to you Bon Jovi, even though your concert was friggin’ awesome too, albeit perhaps a tad misty. You really don’t need fog for every song...)

Weezer was great too, and the best part was listening to 50,000 Japanese people become confused at the same time when a white guy sang them their national anthem with backing power chords. The singer speaks a good bit of Japanese because his wife is Japanese, apparently. Who knew? I didn’t.

But, goodness gracious, Basement Jaxx just might be the best thing I have ever done live, besides live. They had a stage show with dancers, costumes, stilts, giant bells, golden whistles and some nasty, nasty jams. In general, I like going to see live shows of bands I know, replete with repertoires I can sing along to. In the past, when I have gone to live shows of bands who I have never listened to before, I am not as invested, and so not so fulfilled. Not with Basement Jaxx, though. I only knew one of their songs, and vaguely at that, but I was jumping around like a bean the entire time, grinding on anything and anyone who would let me.

Fuji Rock is right up there with the best experiences I have had in Japan. The concerts were ridiculous, the food and water didn’t break the bank, the shit toilets were still always stocked with fresh toilet paper, the staff was smiley and helpful, and watching my favorite bands, many of whom I associate with powerful memories from back in America, play against the backdrop of the classic, mist-hidden, mysterious mountains of Japan was surreal. The combined effect was to make sleeping in a tent that we might as well have set up in a river seem like a five star hotel.

Santa Didn't Leave a Present. He Just Turned Off My Hot Water

Japanese houses are built for the summer. The walls are paper thin and the doors within the house are on tracks so you can slide them around and remove them easily and rearrange your house to get the best airflow and light during the summer months which are indeed very hot. Unfortunately, someone forgot to mention to house builders here in Iwate that the winters are the problem. I can imagine these house-builders working by candle-light in winter in feudal Japan, preparing plans and schematics for the construction of Iwate houses for the coming Spring. They sit hunched over, imaging ways to suck out as much insulation from paper as they can, completely oblivious to the six feet of snow piled against their warm log cabins.

I guess freezing temperatures in my house for four months of the year is a small price to pay for my thousand degrees of feng shui interior deco freedom for the other four. Maybe I am being a little extreme. There are of course a couple ways to keep warm. One option is to buy a coffee table with a heater under it. Then, you simply lift the ‘table’ part off the ‘legs’ part and put a blanket over the ‘legs’ part and replace the ‘table’ part. Now, all you have to do to stay warm is sit in one position and not move all night.

You could also go the route of buying a mini heater which spits venomous flue filled, but very hot, air at you in three hour cycles. The machine actually turns itself off after three hours, presumably because it wants to make sure you’re still alive and haven’t asphyxiated from the toxic chemicals in the air. Of course that never happens though, because the house-builders from years and years ago have already assured that those toxic elements, along with the hot air, have already dispersed through your paper walls and into the night. Great foresight fellas!

When I first came to Japan, there was a session in our three day orientation program called ‘Surviving Winter.’ It wasn’t ‘Making the Most out of Winter,’ or ‘Tips for a more Enjoyable Winter.’ It was ‘Surviving Winter.’ The discussions ranged from stark to unsettling. We talked about condensing whole apartment into one room, taking only the bare essentials and a couple things for ‘fun,’ like a book or a puzzle, for the four month hiatus of normal social life. The rest of the apartment was to be quarantined and forgotten as you sequestered in your private Ark. We talked about buying electric plates to put on top of the electric tables to cook food on, making kitchens disposable. We talked about people who had an allergy to kerosene fumes and developed rashes all over their necks and arms but couldn’t really do anything because there isn’t a feasible alternative to kerosene heating. Electric heaters take an hour to warm a solid 3 foot halo around themselves, probably aiming to corner the contortionist market.

Another unhealthy by-product of using kerosene to heat Japanese apartments is that because the outside is so cold and the inside of houses are so much warmer, moisture forms on the inside of windows and doors and becomes a perfect breeding ground for bacteria and some fungi and some other things. My friend’s apartment is in an area prone to that stuff, and during winter they come out in full force. He has boils on his face which he takes a cream for.

Last winter was alright, as I was still in the ‘living in Japan’ honeymoon portion of my stay. At that time, the boils were quaint… This winter has been rougher, with more snow and colder temperatures (I have no documentation of this besides a feeling in my old bones, mind you). I made an oath to myself last November not to let the winter dictate my plans. I consciously spent more money on taxis and buses or forced myself to walk into town to meet friends and do things just like I would during the warmer, bike-friendly months. It worked great. I was much more of a force this winter. The light was at the end of the tunnel. I could almost hear Spring knocking gently and warmly at the door. Then, 30 centimeters of snow dropped and I was relegated this weekend to my house, bored and cold. In an effort to cheer myself up, I made a list: The Top Ten Things about not Having a Centrally Heated House.

10. I use less oil when I cook because it’s frozen all the time

9. When I step out of the shower I know immediately where on my body I did not entirely towel off

8. I can leave dirty dishes in the sink for weeks and my kitchen won’t smell

7. Even if my kitchen did smell I wouldn’t care because I never go in there

6. Chewing toothpaste is interesting

5. I never have to worry about hat hair because I always keep my hat on

4. I don’t have to worry about that uncomfortable fifteen or twenty minute adjustment period when you leave your house and find that its much, much colder outside

3. I hear freezing to death, after dying in your sleep, is one of the best ways to go

2. If you burn Styrofoam in your living room for heat and inhale deeply you can get a pretty good high going.

1. I can read global warming articles on the internet and be happy