Brrr~

Here I am, shivering in the cold, in the middle of winter where the temperature in my room is around 8 degrees Celcius, writing this entry

*shivers*

Before I came to Japan, I never knew that winter would be so cold. Now I finally know the true feeling of coldness. And it’s not a nice feeling at all! +_____+ If I can, I would just want to curl up in my bed, wrap myself up with layers of hot blankets and hibernate till spring comes. Which unfortunately I can’t since I am not a polar bear or black bear or whatever animal that hibernates in winter.

Thankfully the Japanese are brilliant in tackling the cold issue so there are lots of heating products in the market where one can purchase to keep themselves warm. For example, there’s the usual hot water bottle (called 湯たんぽ yutanpo) where one fills the bottle with hot water and it’ll keep your body warm for a good couple of hours. Normally used during sleeping, now they come in very cute designs like the ones below.

Personally I don’t really like hot water bottle (although all those cute designs are really tempting me to buy one) because you can’t carry one around and only can be used when you are asleep so I used other products instead.

Kairo or カイロ are really useful and they last for hours! They comes in 2 types, stickable and non-stickable. The stickable are those that have adhesive tapes behind where you can stick them onto your clothes (not directly onto the skin) and non-stickables, you just put them in your pockets or carry them around in your hands to keep them warm. It comes in a small sealed pouch with beads inside where you shake/crumple it and a chemical reaction will occur resulting the pouch to heat up and stays warm for hours.

PS: You might wonder why don’t I get a heater instead since it’s the logical thing to do but I’ll tell you that the electricity bills in Japan is not as cheap as you think. The main reason why I don’t use my heater is I don’t want to die of shock or despair every time I receive my electricity/utilities bill each month since my bills are high enough as they are due to my everyday online and hot blanket ritual.

PSS: I hate winter cold, that’s for sure. Really looking forward to spring and summer~

~ by shiroirukaze on January 7, 2009.