This morning was reported to be 3 degrees. Celsius that is. That sounded awful chilly until I checked my Google conversions and noted 37.4 Fahrenheit, which by wimpy Californian standards is Oh my God, mind blowingly cold! but thankfully rugged Midwestern living (ho ho) has gotten me used to waiting for buses at outside temps of -15˚C (5˚F). So it still ain’t the worse I could handle, and I will brag brag brag about it all the live long day… and freeze freeze freeze on my bike and in my apartment during the nighttime regardless. Bravado can’t fully take the bite out of a chill, so I’ll just keep the scarf wrapped over my mouth.

At school, the students dutifully march around their unheated buildings in Meiji era uniforms as directed, and especially stoic are the girls with their knee length skirts and calf socks and goosebumps in between. Poor things. It must be quite a sight to catch the foreign teacher walking around with trench coat and scarf on the entire day as if she was preparing to face a blizzard tearing through the hallways. Those open spaces are certainly draft tunnels, and Japanese style schools have successfully defied alteration over the centuries. Then again, nothing brings about the spirit of the season like gathering round the kerosene gas stoves with the children, warming our legs and hands as we huddle side by side… before the other teachers arrive to open all the doors and air out the accumulated toxic smell.

For homes, the Japanese have developed an electric blanket/table unit called a kotatsu to keep your lower half warm while you… sit around a table. Seriously, it would never have occurred to me to combine the two, but I suppose it makes quite a bit of sense if you think about it, since that’s probably where you’d spend the bulk of you waking time during the cold months.

My apartment doesn’t have a kotatsu, it’s just not big enough, so my tactic is to do a big blanket dive whenever I sense the chills a chasin’. I so love nestling under a hill of cotton and flannel. I’ve noticed though that I also have this unfortunate habit of kicking off my comforters during sleep. So all my careful layering is completely thrown out of sequence and lopped on the side of the bed, and I end up waking up in the middle of the night shivering and coughing. What the hell is up? Why can’t my subconscious(?) self get a clue that this helps neither of us to either continue frolicking through dreamland or to be able to get up in the morning without so many dying-like groans. Such a lack in cross-brain communication. I can’t deal with this relationship.

Maybe I should also start learning how to use my air conditioning/heating unit. (Bravado lets out a sigh… aw, dammit.)

Now listening to Latyrx. Bay Area represent! 90’s represent.. and, yes, still it’s hard to process that the bulk of my 90’s experience is now over a decade old. Quiet, already.

Starting Friday, more 90’s and music… in Tokyo! Off to see Daft Punk. Woohoo! Will tell you about it after this weekend.