Keeping Warm, 8 Ways

We live in Nagano prefecture. You know, where the winter Olympics were in '98. We have the Japanese Alps and we have snow. It gets cold. How cold? Last year our olive oil froze. My face wash froze. We hear that our predecessors used to unplug the fridge in the winter. Cold.

Why? We ask ourselves that all the time. We both grew up in the frozen tundra of the Midwest. We can handle cold. Also, Japan is so technologically advanced. You'd think they'd have robots following you around blowing hot air at you or something. Not the case.

Here's the situation: we have single-paned glass windows. Then we have shoji screens covering those. Shoji screens are paper. I don't think the house has any insulation to speak of. So far we've been lucky and it's been in the 40s and 50s but it looks like the cold snap is coming this week.

So, here are 8 things we're doing to stay warm, in no particular order. We are still learning some tricks and hope to pick up some more ideas this winter.

1) Kerosene heaters. These are illegal in most US states. They're pretty messy (have to funnel from a large container into the heater) and can cause fires. Also, there is a risk of asphyxiation as they consume oxygen and, if used in a small unventilated room, can use up all the oxygen and/or cause carbon monoxide poisoning (killing you without warning). This is the main heating system used in Japan. My school has one in every classroom. I have one blowing at me right now. They are also stinky.

2) Electric heater. We are borrowing an electric heater from a friend. It gives off almost no heat so we mostly dry clothes on it. It turns out clothes don't dry when it's too cold (and, like most of the world, almost no one has dryers here). So, we may have to start going to the laundromat if we don't want to rotate them constantly on the electric heater.

3) Kotatsu. This is a low table with an electric heater under it and blanket over it. You sit under it...all winter long. Families eat under it. Some people sleep under it. We just got a couch and now we're back on the floor camping under the ol' kotatsu.

4) Hot water bottle. Simple enough -pour boiling water in a plastic bottle, cover it with a fuzzy cozy and sleep with it or hug it while sitting under the kotatsu.

5) Onsen. Pay a couple of bucks to go to your local hot spring for a bath. Get as warm as you can handle and then hurry home to bed.

6) Heat packs. All my students have these little hand warmers in their pockets. They also have adhesive ones that you can stick to your shirt. My teacher says she wears one on her back every day in winter. I guess they're like the hand warmers hunters use except they're necessary for daily indoor survival here.

7) Layering. It's only early December and I'm already wearing socks, leg warmers, leggings, pants, tank top, long sleeve shirt, sweater, jacket and scarf to school. What else can I add? Another pair of socks? I went to the chain store Uniqlo and was amazed at the array of under clothes - long sleeve shirts and leggings for men and women to wear under their clothes. Also, they have these fuzzy bloomers for school girls to wear under their skirts. I've also seen a stomach warmer -like a leg warmer that you wear around your middle section. You may be too thin if you're willing to add a layer there.

8) Creative thinking. Put your clothes under your kotatsu while you shower or eat breakfast so they're warm when you put them on. Learn how to set your kerosene heater so it turns on 20 minutes before your alarm goes off. We want to figure out if we can cover our windows with plastic (like we do in the US). We've already hung curtains and blankets over our windows to keep some of the heat in and cold out. We've already put foam strips on our fusuma door frames to fill in the gaps.

9) Heated toilet seat. How could I almost have forgotten one of the best Japanese inventions ever? We are so grateful for our heated toilet seat since our bathroom area has no heat at all otherwise. Why don't we have these in the US?

Please tell us your ideas for staying warm!! We're wide open for suggestions...

Commercialism and Japanese Art

I think we've already mentioned our ongoing interest in the intriguing Yayoi Kusama, who is amazing as well as literally crazy (she voluntarily lives in a mental institution outside Tokyo). She was giving Warhol a run for his money for a while back in the late 50s in NYC. She calls herself the Princess of Polka Dots and does stuff like this:

But she's especially known for these:

As is common with Japanese artists, she wasn't recognized for her greatness in Japan until she was already well recognized by the West. It wasn't until 2006 that Japan gave her the Praemium Imperiale recognizing her as one of the most important living artists (she was also the first woman to receive this honor...in 2006!!). She once sold a piece for $5.1 million, which is a record for a living female artist. Not bad for some one who has struggled with mental illness all their life. Anyways, I found it interesting recently when I went to her website and discovered this:

She's posing with a cell phone and a purse that are bedazzled with her polka dots and are for sale. Moreover, she's quoted as saying, "This strange, joyout moment. I adore it. I love the 'iida' mobile phone deeply." Ok, so she's not known for her English skills. But isn't it kind of bizarre that she'd be pimping this stuff herself, on her own site? I mean, two years ago she sold something at Christie's for over $5 million - doesn't it cheapen her art a bit? Anyways, she's 81 years old. Would you buy a phone lauded by some one born before the 1930's?

As it turns out, this is behavior is not that strange for a Japanese artist. Look at Takashi Murakami.

He once sold a sculpture for $15.2 million at Sotheby's. And he designs for skateboards and placemats. He makes handbags for Louis Vuitton but also sells his art on keychains, t-shirts and other more pedestrian items. He also designed Kanye West's album art for Graduation.

Right now he has 15 sculptures on exhibit at the Palace de Versailles and the French monarchists are calling it illegal. It's probably because of his more erotic pieces, but I also wonder if the French have a problem with his commercialization. He has a studio outside Tokyo where his assistants churn out his merch - both "high" and "low" art. He's not the first pop artist to do this, but he has to be one of the more successful at it. He's lucky to be in Japan where they love cute stuff. He literally studied what makes characters like Hello Kitty and Mickey Mouse popular and then created his own, Mr. DOB--seen here as a plush doll:

That's taking it a step further than Kusama, isn't it? Anyways, he's a pretty interesting guy to watch people's reaction to. As a Japanese tourist in Versailles said at the end of the Sydney Morning Herald article, "I'm not so interested in this type of object. Maybe this is better for foreign people, for French people. He's very famous in New York, isn't he?"

Yesterday I was feeling ambitious and made these homemade pumpkin pie pop tarts.

That afternoon a man appeared at our door with a big package (on Sunday - love that about Japan). Thanks to my family for the Christmas in a Box surprise!

Butoh: Something Japanese that most Japanese people don't know about

I can't remember where we first heard about Butoh but whenever we mention it to a Japanese person they think we're saying budo or mean bushido (the samurai code of conduct). It's this avant garde modern dance type art form. In some ways, it seems Japanese but it tips the scales of weird and there's no real cute to counterbalance. Sure we want to check out Kabuki and maybe Noh theater, but we really want to see some live Butoh someday. Funny enough, it probably won't be in Japan. Leave it to us Americans to be interested in one of the newest Japanese art forms. Butoh began only in the 1960's.

Critics of Kabuki point out that it has no personal interpretation. The actor is to follow the form completely. Noh is even more stylized and esoteric. They try to embody the character through the mask. The less the actor puts of himself into it, the better. Basically, some say it is form without substance. That doesn't really make me want to go see it.

Of course, Japanese butoh has more form than butoh in the West. Still, there seems to be more soul and spirit behind it than Kabuki and Noh.

Check this performance out - how interesting is this?

Psst: I made a mille crepe cake this week. It's so easy. Make a bunch of crepes. Whip some whipping cream into homemade Cool Whip. Layer crepe, whipped cream, crepe, etc. Periodically douse with chocolate sauce. Finished! Sorry the picture's not so hot. Obviously I took it instead of John:) Also it tasted way better than it looked!

Geysers and Shakshouka

We just had an Israeli couchsurfing couple stay with us for 2 nights. It was so interesting to talk about politics, food, travel, religion, military service, health care, abortion and other topics that come up when you're walking around town or cooking. They are a really cool couple; we'd love to stay with them in Israel someday. Also, they made us realize that eating kosher in Japan is arguably more difficult than being vegetarian here.

They made us Shakshouka. It's a simple but very delicious Israeli dish. I mean, we've used all these ingredients while cooking before, but we've never made anything quite like it. There are many recipes online, but this one seems about the closest to how they made it for us. It kind of reminds me of Mirza Ghasemi, a Persian dish I like to make but had kind of forgotten about. They were grateful that we introduced them to neri goma - sesame paste used here in Japan that is the same as tahini. So, they made a tahini dressing to drizzle over the salad and dip the bread in. It was so cool to have people speaking Hebrew in our Japanese kitchen!



They were interested in the geyser in Suwa, the next town over. We had never been either so we headed over Sunday morning. Here's some video John took. It's not Old Faithful, but it was worth the walk.

Still Fall

When I heard about all the snow and ice at home I started feeling pretty lucky that we are still having a beautiful fall here. It's been in the 50s and there are still some trees changing color. A couple weekends ago my friend and I went to a park in Takato that is known for its leaves. Indeed Japanese maples abounded and everyone was trying to capture the magic with their huge cameras.

Also, this fall I got a bit obsessed with chestnuts. In Kyoto I had chestnut ice cream, chestnut tart, chestnuts on pasta, etc. In Takato we saw these chestnuts that had fallen from the tree. Once I saw how they're wrapped in that spikey shell, their high cost made more sense. We roasted them in the oven the other day. Smelled just like when I used to eat them in the winter in Madrid. Street vendors would be roasting them on corners and they'd hand them to you in a paper cone. Roasting chestnuts is still one of my favorite fall smells.

Sushi Party!

We made sushi the other night. Since we're vegetarian, we get pretty creative with what we think should go in it. This time we put egg, spicy tofu, cucumber, carrot, burdock root (we like the Japanese word better though - gobo!) and avocado. We get how the Japanese are minimalist and would probably just put one thin slice of cucumber. But we're American so we fill 'em chock full of random veggie goodness.

Our friend made gyoza and this lovely soup garnished with chrysanthemum!

Sorry for the dark photos!

Rice Cooker Chocolate Spice Cake

I'd been meaning to try this for a while and I'm happy to report - it works! I used this recipe but added nutmeg and allspice because I was envisioning a spice meets chocolate cake. It happened to be vegan but I feel confident now that any old cake recipe would work. The result was a moist and somewhat crumbly deliciously rich cake (I may have added extra cocoa powder to finish the bag off). I can't say this for sure but my sense is that in the oven this cake might have been a bit dry and crumbly. Here was the result after I flipped it out of my rice cooker pan:


Looks like a cake, right? It definitely needed something though. Then I remembered a recipe for vegan chocolate ganache only I was too lazy to find it at the time and ended up using this one only I subbed butter and my chocolate chips weren't vegan. The point wasn't to make it vegan but rather that I didn't have cream lying around. The cake looked much improved.

I will probably bake cakes in the rice cooker more often. My oven (read: large toaster oven) heats pretty unpredictably and I have to check on things a lot. With the rice cooker, I had a feeling I could have cooked it a little less or more and it wouldn't have mattered much. As long as the toothpick comes out clean, it's done, right? Plus, I don't have nice pans here and with the teflon coating of the rice cooker pan, the cake flipped right out and the clean up was easy.

Hooray for multiple uses of a bulky appliance!