It’s getting colder outside, and here in Japan we’ve already
had a day of snow! Sadly (or maybe not
so much) it came and went in the same day…
I woke up that morning (thankfully a day off for me), and the ground was
covered in beautiful white! It even
flurried a bit! So with this colder
weather, and the beginning of the last month of the year, comes many things.
First is to add furnishing to the apartment that will make
it more winter friendly. I’d already
been using my heating blanket (a wonderful gift that makes sleeping at night
pure heaven!), but I’d only wanted to use the little electric heater so much
(it can be so expensive!). One of the
first things that I did recently to help make it warmer in the evenings is to
purchase kerosene for my space heater (I also gave one to A-san as I had
discovered on my first arrival that there was actually 2 in my apartment). It was soooo nice that first evening that I
added kerosene and turned on my heater for the first time! I still need to figure out what some of the
functions of it do (there are various lights and buttons on it, and of course
like everything else it is all in kanji).
I’ll tell you this though, it sure makes my little room nice and warm!
Something that I’d found was happening though, as you learn
in science heat rises. This means that a
lot of the time, my feet would be left cold.
There are a couple of remedies for this.
One would be to buy this kind of foot cushion that some stores sell that
are supposed to keep your feet warm.
However, I don’t fancy keeping my feet in place like that though. Lap blankets are nice, but as the name
suggests they are usually on the small side so they don’t do much for your
feet. The other option was one that I
had been toying with for a while, but was still very much on the fence about
it. As it happened (and kind of spur of
the moment too), while I was in town the other day to buy a new thicker futon
for winter, I found that at the same time they had some of their kotatsu items
on sale as well! The table was the
lowest price I had ever seen it (even compared to Amazon!), and some of the
basic and simple covers and mats were on sale for a really good price as
well! I was able to get all the items
for it I wanted for under 10,000 yen! (a little under $100 at the current
exchange rate) As wonderful luck would
have it, there was enough space for it in my living room, so now I keep nice
and snug with my feet under the kotatsu, and the space heater warming the rest
of me up! I’m also considering buying a
little hot water bottle as well. The
kind of cool thing about it, is that you can use it both to pour hot water in
to keep you warm, or ice water in the winter to cool you off. They also have some cute decorative covers
for them too. I might stop at Juntendo
later to see about getting one.
This doesn’t help me much at school though… Some of my schools are ok (seems like maybe
only the smaller ones), they’ve already started using the heaters. But the one I am typing in right now for
example… not so much… I think since it
is just me and one other person (and this is one of the bigger staff rooms), it
isn’t very cost affective to have the heater going. So, I’m sitting here with my little lap
blanket trying to keep warm. I think it
also doesn’t help that my desk is by the window side, so the cold radiates
through it really easily. It’s
especially noticeable because the side of me facing the window is much colder
than the other side…
The other adventure I’m in the middle of is getting
Christmas preparations under way. I’ve
already bought, signed, and mailed the important Christmas cards; but I’m
considering going to get a few more and possibly send them out this week. I’ve also been looking for little Christmas
presents that would be easy to send back home.
I’ve gotten quite a few done, but I’m probably still about halfway
there… I’ve only got 2 weekends left,
and both of them have some events that may make going to town to shop a bit
difficult. I may have to do some late
afternoon shopping this weekend to try and get most of it done. If it wasn’t such a far drive, I’d consider
going more often during the week, but by the time I’d get there, I’d have maybe
an hour or so before the shops would close.
Part of the problem is trying to figure out what I’m going to be getting
people. I know that if I can decide that
beforehand then it should make shopping faster.
The Daiso has been a big saver here!
One of the advantages to the 100 yen shop (Dollar Store) here is that a
good portion of the items are in very good quality (way better than back home),
and it allows me to get some nice trinkets for family back home. As shipping can be a tad pricey, the other trick
is to find items that won’t be that heavy or delicate to send. There are a few cute and interesting items at
the Daiso though that I think will make for some interesting gifts!
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