Finding the Good Life in Japan
(Page 2 of 4)
October/November 2008
By Winifred Bird
Even in cities, one can find vegetable fields scattered among the houses. By using land in this way, families remain closely connected and put the land to its most appropriate use. Yet, it hasn’t been easy to give up my dream of a little spread where I can’t see the neighbors and they can’t see me.
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We rent a little house in Mihama, a small town between the ocean and the mountains. Unfortunately, older houses such as ours have extremely poor insulation and no central heating. They are built to stay cool in the summer — with sliding doors and screens — but not to stay warm in the winter. We heated our previous house using a woodstove fed with scraps from Keita’s work site. Unfortunately, we have to heat our current house with kerosene space heaters, which are ubiquitous in Japan. One of our goals is to generate our own electricity and heat.
I have, however, learned a few good Japanese tricks for keeping warm in the winter without using too much gas or electricity. One is called the kotatsu, a table with a heating lamp attached to its underside and a blanket covering it (see photo). On winter evenings, whole families often gather around the kotatsu with their legs under the blanket, thus reducing the space heated to several square feet.
Another great doohickey is the yutampo, the Japanese version of the hot water bottle. These are placed at the foot of the bed and are made of hard plastic or metal, covered in quilted bags. They stay hot enough through the night so you can use the hot water to wash your face in the morning. You’re not supposed to sleep actually touching the yutampo, but I usually sleep with my feet on it (touching the quilt, not the bottles directly — otherwise I would get burns).
As for the hot daily baths the Japanese are famously fond of, gas for heating water is conserved by using the same bath water for the whole family. Almost all houses have efficient on-demand water heaters. Solar water heaters also are common. And people still frequent bathhouses where the whole neighborhood can share one or two large steaming pools, but unfortunately the number of people who use bathhouses is shrinking rapidly.
Special winter food goes a long way toward keeping us warm. Nabe is a hot pot of vegetables and tofu, fish or meat dipped in boiling broth and kept warm on the table by a small burner heated with gas. We’re also warmed by eating roasted sweet potatoes, steaming stews and soups.
Our Gardens
Our gardens provide many of the organic vegetables we eat. The weather is mild enough to allow us to eat summer vegetables late into the fall; greens, roots and brassicas through the winter; and spring crops quite early in the season. We have small gardens in front of and behind our house and “rent” a third that’s just a short walk away. The land for the latter is owned by an elderly woman and had become overgrown with weeds and turned into a de facto neighborhood garbage dump (unused agricultural land is plentiful in most rural areas). She lets us grow a garden there in exchange for cleaning it up.
