It's so cold, it's novel

Experiencing our first winter in Japan

January 2023

“Mum! The fridge is broken!”

The announcement was shock to my ears. Broken? It’s only a few months old!

“What do you mean it’s broken?” My state of surprise couldn’t come up with a better response than that.

“It’s warm inside the fridge!”

By this stage I was standing at the fridge beside Bob. The door was open, the light was on inside. Everything looked normal, I couldn’t see any breakages. I put my hand inside the fridge, and yes, it felt warm. I’d had this experience before when in Canberra. The house got so cold overnight in winter, that in the morning the fridge felt warm inside! There was a local joke about storing things in the fridge so they didn’t freeze.

“It’s not broken. It just feels warm because the room is so cold.”

Bob was somewhat skeptical and genuinely surprised.

“Are you sure?” he asked, breathing out white smoke with each word.

“Yep!” Sadly, our house was freezing!

Living in a place so cold was novel to them. Actually, the coldness kept getting colder, bringing new experiences with it. The first one was when the fish pond froze over. Bob broke the ice and took a piece on his walk to school, showing the other neighborhood kids. They all fussed over it, but I’m sure it was nothing new to them!

For, me, the first real surprise was the frozen ground. Stepping off the driveway onto the dirt, I expected there to be some give from the usually soft ground beneath my feet. Instead, it felt like concrete! My comment about it caused Bob to kick a small ridge of dirt that the car tyre tracks had made. The result was a sore toe and a tyre track in still in tact!

One morning Mrs Suzuki had a plant in her hand as we approached her house on the way to school. At the base of the stems was ice. I was fascinated! Apparently this plant somehow draws up water in the night, and in the morning these unique ice shapes can be found at the base of the stems!

As the weeks in January stretched on, the days and nights seem to also creep further down the thermometer. At night, we could feel very cold draughts seeping into the house, despite all doors and windows being closed. The house is too old to be “air tight”. On windy nights particularly, you had to be careful where you sat in the tatami room or you’d feel cold pushing onto your back!

One morning I woke up to discover the condensation on our bedroom windows was frozen. Frozen! I knew my bedroom had felt like a refrigerator, but now it had turned into a freezer!!

My hands had red, itchy and painful sores on them from the cold. Every morning on the way to school my nose would freeze, to the point that, I started to entertain the thought of wearing a face mask, just to keep warm. I also dreamt about having a nose warmer like Piglet. My whole face would get so cold that I couldn’t move my mouth smoothly so when I spoke words weren’t clear.

One day I stumbled across some thick, wool-skin-like work gloves in the garden shed. Yes Please!!!! I claimed them as my own, so thankful to have something that gave greater protection against this cold.

We’d turned off our outside tap so the pipes wouldn’t freeze and get damaged. At school, they left their outside tap running, slightly. Enough to prevent freezing the pipes. Now the old trough was becoming an artwork, with ice forming on both ends from the splashing of the water! My kids were fascinated!

The novelty kept coming when, one night it was time to have showers and yells started coming from the bathroom. I went to see what the fuss was about and was mortified to find out, the shower wasn’t working. No water was coming out! As the shower pipes run along the outside of the house, we eventually concluded that they had frozen! Despite having insulation around them! It did somehow feel particularly cold that night. I felt much gratitude for the bath which has it’s own reheat system! Which thankfully was still working! And thankfully the bath was filled. So it was bird baths for us that night, splashing water from the bath onto our bodies to have a quick wash.

I was not wrong about it feeling particularly cold that night. The next morning on the way to school we noticed the water, which usually runs freely in the gutters, was now frozen. Kiyo told us it was currently -10 degrees. Minus 10 degrees?! Have I ever even experienced such a low temperature before?? I wondered how cold it got at Thredbo and Charlotte’s Pass. I’d been snow skiing there before. Would it have gotten that cold on the ski fields??

Complaining, I mean, sharing about this cold weather with a friend, she later sent me a video of a lady who’s washing had gotten frozen in an unexpected snow storm. She was pulling off stiff laundry from her clothesline, laying the clothes horizontally on top of her clothes basket! It looked pretty funny and amazing really, as I’ve never experienced such coldness in Australia. I shared the video with Kiyo.

The next morning, when we got to the school gate to wave the children off, one of the teachers was standing outside her classroom, spinning a cloth around. She’d just done some cleaning in her classroom and was trying to get the water out of the cloth. A few pleasantries were expressed and then she stopped spinning the cloth, but it didn’t drop down by her side. It was stiff as a board!!!! Kiyo and I were gobsmacked! It was just like that video!! The kids were gobsmacked, but also inspired!

Hiroto went home wth Kiyo and grabbed a towel, wet it and went outside to swing it around and freeze it. Within two minutes it was stiff and standing upright in his hand! Kiro sent me a photo!

When the kids got home from school I showed them the photo. And thus began the daily morning activity of walking to school, swinging a wet towel around and freezing it! Haha!!!!

Despite all this coldness, very little snow fell, much to the great disappointment of my children. They longed for a good dump of snow to play in, to build a snowman, to have snowball fights, to toboggan and maybe even build a snow cave (now that would have to be one really good dump!). I thought back to when we first arrived in Japan. Tokyo had been grey, overcast and miserable.

“Is this what winter will be like?” I’d asked Hiroki, Shujin’s younger brother.

“No more like… snow,” came his reply.

Well, we hadn’t had much snow. But thankfully we hadn’t had too much grey, overcast weather either. Despite the very low temperatures, then sun regularly shone, and for this, I was extremely grateful.

It was certainly an experience, living through such cold weather. But it was still only January… February was yet to come!