Atatakai means WARM

Brian writes:

You can pretend, Josh, that you've never before lived in an apartment with holes in its exterior walls, but I think we both know this is not the case. Which reminds me, do they have squirrels in Japan?

God, I don't KNOW if they have squirrels in Japan.  What a good question!  Well, things they DO have include roaches big as a baby’s foot, bigger-than-life DEADLY POISONOUS CENTIPEDES, biiiiiiiig Hercules beetles, and terrifyingly big DEADLY SPIDERS.  Well, okay, I don't KNOW if the spiders are deadly, but they look big enough to capture and eat any child in the nation, easy.  The centipedes tho?  Stay away.  Actually deadly.  And like a foot long.  Black, orange legs.  Nightmares.

Anyway, if we're being technical about it, Brian, my room was the one where the floor didn't meet any of the walls (it was like, "How is the house standing?  What is the ceiling resting on?  Or the floor?  What am I standing on?  Where AM I?" ... it was better just not to think about it), and your room was the one with the squirrel door.  Oops, I mean "holes in the wall."

Then of course, there's the racoons.

Yesterday was a weatherproofing day though, and check me out: I FIGURED OUT HOW TO WORK MY HEATER!!!  I AM A GENIUSSSSSS!!!!!  It gets a lot warmer in there now, although it also smells like Kerosene.  Which doesn’t mean, “no, you didn’t figure out how to work your heater,” it just means that that’s what kerosene heaters do – they smell like kerosene.  But I got weatherstripping stuff for my sliding doors (and need to get some more – boy it helps!) and will get some for around the window panes, and I got some plasticky stuff to go under the sliding door to my room so it doesn’t squeak anymore when it slides shut (yay!), AAAAND I got a power cord for my kotatsu table!  

What the hell am I talking about?  The kotatsu is a small table with an electric heater slung underneath and draped with a special thick quilty futon that traps the warmth down around your legs as you sit.  In winter it becomes the center of family and social life here in Japan – everything happens around the kotatsu, where it’s warm and toasty.  Last night I even saw a talkshow kind of thing on TV where the twelve or fifteen folks on the show were all sat around three sides of this one massive kotatsu table, their legs stuck beneath the futon and feeling nice and cozy (while the live studio audience, I’m sure, froze watching them).  The kotatsu is supposed to have a kind of heavy panel top that holds the futon down, but mine, uh, doesn’t.  It came with the apartment, and it just, well, doesn’t have a top.  I don’t know why not.  Nor do I have a kotatsu futon; I’m just using a blanket.  These things I need to buy.  It all adds into my growing list of “how the hell did my predecessor live here for two freaking years?” questions; according to my handler Mami-chan, the person before me never used the kotatsu!  Shock!  I guess that explains why there wasn’t a power cord for it – sheesh.  The thing totally rocks though, it makes doing anything feel cozy and nice and fun.  Shopping for a top (I may just need to get a whole new one actually) and a futon are on my list for the coming week.