16 posts tagged “winter”

A traditional Japanese house isn’t sealed and centrally heated in winter. The warmth is localized in particular rooms. Or even a part of a room, which part might be a table with a quilt covering and an electric heating bulb underneath. This heated table is a kotatsu.  

A kotatsu squats on the tatami floor. Seated under it, the lower half of the body becomes deliciously warm, and the warmth moves up through your clothes while your head stays cool and alert. You eat, read, write, watch TV from its womblike environment. And because you are sitting on the floor, at any time you can lie back to relax or nap and still be comfortably cocooned.

During the winter, the kotatsu becomes a focal point for friends and family who spend a lot of time sitting across from each other under it. Not every house has one these days, for there are those who prefer to heat a room to move about in. But I couldn’t imagine the colder months without the simple, intimate pleasure of the kotatsu.

kotatsu
mikan tangerines
a flask of hot sake:
the joys of winter

--Julian

Note: This is one of an occasional series on the simple pleasures of Japan. To find the others, click 2008 in the Archives (right column of this page), type “pleasure” in the “Filter posts by tag” box at the top of the page that appears, and hit the “Go” button. In the series so far: tatami; ofuro (bath); jinja (shrine); sakura (cherry blossom); ocha (green tea), and uchimizu (scattering water in summer).

A winter parting
Your soft lips convey love and
a coat of chapstick

--Julian

With Shinkansen bullet trains driving deep into Northern Japan, an overnight trip to Yamagata is now feasible. In just 3 hours, we're whisked from urban Tokyo to a prefecture that seems like another world. Yamagata is a vast and fertile plain bisected by sparkling rivers and ringed by snow-covered mountains. Hot springs abound. It is a place to exhale and to relax.

Our first destination was Zao, a basin on the side of a mountain that is a popular snowboard and ski resort. We'd

come to see the famous trees transformed by icy winds into an army of monstrous snow sculptures. Although February is when they are usually at their best, this year they were almost bare of snow.

Next we drove to the hillside temple complex of Yamadera. A half-hour climb took us past graves and caves and grottos. Meditating monks once lived and died here. In one hut, there was a model of a mummy, likely related to sacred rituals practiced locally and now forbidden. It's a photographer's paradise, but near the top, we were cheated of the money shot—the one in the tourist brochures—as the clifftop temple is currently under repair and shrouded in sheets of white plastic.

The final place we visited was Ginzan, a small hot spring resort built on either side of a small river deep in the country. Its previous obscurity and isolated position led to a happy accident: most of its splendid old wooden hostelries weren't torn down and rebuilt. Thanks to sensitive restoration, Ginzan is now a rare and beautiful example of a resort from an earlier age.

Yamagata in general benefits from its isolation and distance from the capital. Its springs and mountains, its sights and delicious sake added up to a wonderful winter weekend.

--Julian (Photos by M)

Cloudless winter night
Beside me on the long walk home
Companion moon

--Julian

Fuji's own climate:
Summit cloud-shrouded
On a blue-sky cloudless day

--Julian

It began raining late on Saturday night and didn't stop until Sunday afternoon. The sky cleared and the temperature dropped during the night. This morning we woke to a spectacular hoarfrost. The empty radish fields above the valley were ghostly white as snow in the first orange of the dawn. The moon, two days past full, shone down. And the sky lightened to show the Tanzawa mountains frosted with snow.

--Julian

We awoke on this first day of December to the first frost of winter, lightly blanching the fields and roadside leaves. The daikon radishes are all harvested and the dark earth is plowed and ready for the next crop.  Here and there in clumps, white and purple button chrysanthemums grow in gangly and confused profusion. On the horizon Fuji is covered with snow down to the foothills. Crows flew across the dawn sky, black on pink.  And then at last the sun broke the tree tops and brought some warmth to the frozen world.

--Julian

Thanks to Friends of the Earth, a "Tip of the Day" arrives in my email inbox every morning. I'm rarely inspired by these ideas big and small for living in harmony with the planet (though I admit to being somewhat taken by the suggestion this week for boiling carrots and mushrooms and making vegetable stock).

But after hanging up clothes to dry in the house this rainy morning, today's tip did catch my attention:

If you are drying clothes indoors, try to avoid putting them over a radiator. This stops heat reaching the rest of the room, creates damp and encourages mould. Instead, put up a clothes horse in an unheated room and open the window slightly to allow damp to escape. This tip comes from Friends of the Earth's book 'Save Cash and Save the Planet' available at http://www.foe.co.uk/shop

The tips originate in the UK, and I think the advice for Japan would be to hang the clothes in an unheated room (no change) but to leave the window closed. That way, the damp clothes can humidify the dry winter air in the room.

Great idea! Now all I need for instant winter humidification is a clothes horse.

To subscribe (free) to Tip of the day: http://www.foe.co.uk/living/tips/

--Julian