As my life is now controlled by the wild cluster@*%# that is Ishikawa weather, its time to divulge the latest madness. Winter has come to my region with a fury. I have seen weather conditions in the past three days that I never even thought existed. (And when a Minnesotan is shocked and appalled by the weather you know something is wildly wrong with this picture). The first startling aspect of the winter in Ishikawa is that snow here does not fall like normal snow should. Instead, it behaves rather like its summer-time cousin, hail, and pelts you with big pachinko-shaped balls of ice and slush (the slush ones kind of explode on impact). The second bizarre surprise Ishikawa winter throws at you is lightning snow. No that wasn't a typo, I'm dead serious, lightning, freakin, snow. Evidently, apocalyptic atmospheric conditions (something sciency about the Siberian winds crossing with the flow of the Sea of Japan) dictate that the seemingly incompatible phenomenons of lightning and snow can happen at the same time over here.
Thus far, the quantity of the snow has been ridiculous, which given the rainpocalypse in November, I was at least able to see coming. In the span of only one night, my world went from no snow at all to this:
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| The snow begins |
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| One day later |
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| This was a a pain in the butt to scope off. The snow here is very thick and slushy. |
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| Ok it is all a bit pretty though |
Compounding the limitless lightning snow is my sworn enemy, cold. Although Minnesota winters are definitely colder in terms of temperature, one can at least escape the booger freezing weather by seeking shelter indoors. This is not the case in Japan. A rather
amusing article posted on cracked.com recently mused on how despite Japan`s popular perception as a technological wonderland, the heating systems here are rather abysmal. The article really hit the nail on the head especially at many of my schools. As evidence, may I present the pinnacle of heating technology, the lastest device in the war against cold, a tea kettle on gas stove.
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| Tadah! |
To be fair, its not like people here just like being colder than Americans. One of the reason I really enjoy studying geography is that it plays such an an enormous role on the lives we live. Indeed, I believe that my being colder here than in that it has more to do with geography of Japan rather than the people. With the exception of shale, Japan has very few
domestic energy resources and according to the United States Energy Information
Administration, is only 16 percent energy self-sufficient (compare this to America which is around 70%). This
lack of domestic energy sources, compounded with Japan being the third largest oil
consumer in the world has made the pricey importation of foreign oil very important to
Japan’s modern economy. The
March 11 Tohoku Earthquake, Tsunami, and subsequent meltdown at Fukushima has exacerbated this energy dilemma. After the Fukushima disaster, many Japanese are
demanding that all nuclear power be abolished (which due to Japan's
geographic location on the Pacific fault line and chronic earthquakes
and natural disasters that follow raise a rather fair point). The problem, however, is that it
has been estimated that this reduction in nuclear power will mean that Japan ‘s
oil and gas consumption will and have skyrocketed along with the cost of energy. As I am aware that schools don't have magical budgets that can create money out of nowhere, I guess that means I will have to just put up with more or less always being cold for the time being.
Anyway, wintertime is also Christmas time and it has been a rather interesting observing the Christmas season here. As Japan is mostly a non-christian nation, most people here are only aware of Christmas on the most superficial of levels. In fact, from what I've heard thus far, most people here are hardly even aware that there is a religious component behind it. (Some Christmas traditions here include buying a christmas themed cake and going out to buy KFC.) Thus, schools here have no compunctions about asking me to teach Christmas lessons. One of the most amusing things to observe in my Christmas lessons is the portion where I demonstrate how to make a paper snowflake and then let the kids make their own. Whether they are 1st or 9th graders, all of the students really really really like this activity and take it really really really seriously. Whereas I recall being content to cut a triangle or three in mine and call it a day, there are many students every class who spend around 20 minutes constructing the best damn snowflake they can make. I've even had one guy who spent the whole class secretly working on his snowflake so that it would pop-out 3-D.
Unfortunately, one of my Japanese teachers insisted that I play Christmas music during one of my lessons. Call me the grinch, but I can't stand the stuff ever since I worked at a grocery store that played the stuff on loop for weeks on end. I'm sorry, but once I heard "Silver Bells" for the twelfth time in one day, I forsake Christmas music forever and being relatively isolated from it has been a great great blessing. That being said, I can't pretend that I miss other parts of Christmas, mostly being with friends and family (and eating delicious cookies). At least I'll be getting my fix when my dad and my brother come to visit me in a few weeks! We will be hanging out in eastern Japan for about a week or so and I am very very excited to see them and to tour Tokyo. Any who, that's all for now folks I'm not sure I'll be having too many exciting adventures until winter break unfortunately as I am trying to save money for the epic trip but I'll post if anything exciting comes up.
