A response to my Cold Manifesto. The temperature is currently around the 90 F range and humid. It's no different from Florida, but in Florida, we like are ACs and overhead fans. Japanese buildings lack overhead fans and use single air conditioner units to cool rooms. The fans people do use are the little ones that swing back and forth blowing one side of your body every few seconds.
So this past week, I have sat in the teacher's room sweating. The AC has not been turned on and there are no fans. But it's not that Japanese people have special bodies that resist heat. Every teacher at every school keeps commenting on how hot it is. So, why don't they turn on the AC?
Because they haven't gotten the official memo from the Board of Education.
Probably for budget reasons, all the schools are suppose to turn on the AC at the same time at the start of summer and turn it off at the same time at the end. My inside source informs me that the schools will get the notice at the beginning of next week, although one school on Wednesday 'secretly' went ahead and switched it on in the afternoon anyway.
Another reason ACs are seldom used is to save energy. For example, this summer, the Japanese Prime Minister will give up wearing ties to work. This is an energy saving plan known as 'Cool Biz', where government workers will wear light clothing so that ACs can be kept at a high temperature. Can you imagine that going well in DC?
I've also been told that the AC is bad for your health and how it's good for your body to sweat and to adapt to different temperatures on it's own. This is why in elementary schools, only the teacher's room has AC, in order to make the kids strong. The problem is that the schools have yet to do this, and I don't care about being strong. I just don't want to sweat.
So how did people survive in times without AC? They didn't build buildings that didn't allow air circulation. Outside right now, it feels great. Yes it's humid, but it's also breezy. The teachers office is one big room that everybody sits in, and even with the windows open, not much air gets in. I sweat inside, but not outside. My opinion is, if Japan is going to build buildings of Western design, they have to give it 100% and include the AC (and turn it on), or at very least, an overhead fan.
For an interesting article on Japanese architecture and the lack of insulation, read Ask an Architect: Insulation.
Update: As I type this, it's 8:40 am, I have a mini-towel around my neck and I am waving a fan I found in my desk. I just had this conversation with my vice-principal:
VP: Does it get humid in Florida?
Me: Yes, but we turn on the AC...
30 seconds later, they closed the windows and turned it on! Happy Friday to me!
Sentence Diagramming
1 week ago
4 comments:
Hi cliff!
u probably dont know me, but may have heard of me. I am Juhi from India who worked in Motobu (everette's predecessor).
I, of course, read your blog occasionally thanks to the links provided by vaughn and elina. I felt an strong urge to post a comment on this one! coming from india, I always got "India is very hot" all the time! And I, resisting all wise impulses to shut up and agree, would begin "ummm, actually..." and then get blank stares for trying to tell people that we use overhead fans and aircons and don't sweat unless we are standing outside in the full glare of the sun!
People always nodded as if they understood and the next day the very same person would say "India is very hot" and be satisfied that I unlike Amerika-jin can adjust to okinawa summers quite well, while I used to be faint with the heat and humidity most of the afternoons!
It is amazing - their concepts of heat and cold and how to manage it...
I hope you have a cool summers! take care
Hello, thanks for your comment! And you are exactly right. I don't mind sweating...if I'm doing an activity that involves it. Sitting in the teacher's room isn't one of them. And I just got asked the other day, is it humid in Florida? Of course I wanted to say the same thing, 'yea, but we circulate our air.'
Summers where I am from are just as hot (and often hotter) than Okinawan summers. The temperature doesn't really get that high here. Sure, it's humid. But DC is humid too- it used to be swampland! We just don't notice the heat as much at home because the AC is blasting away.
Perhaps I am an unusual amerika-jin who doesn't think that Okinawa is unusually hot. I think it's normal summer weather. Summer here just lasts a longer time.
It's hotter and more humid in Florida than here, too. But you are right, we don't notice it because of the AC. Which is my point. All the other classrooms are fine, cause there are fans, but the teacher's room is just suffocating. They don't have fans in there because they have an AC...which they don't turn on. Hopefully soon.
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