Living & Working in Ishikawa, Japan
Starting to feel the cold? It’s been a (relatively) mild winter so far, but Ishikawa snow and storms can last through March. Brace yourselves–winter’s still here.
Staying Warm
SnJ Guide to Winterizing Your Japanese Apartment
Kerosene Heaters: How to Use Them and How to Clean and Store Them
Energy-saving Tips for Staying Warm
Staying Healthy and Happy
Lifehacker on Avoiding the Winter Blues
Flu Prevention from the CDC
Life Outside the Kotatsu
Driving in Winter in Japan: common sense articles from Fukuoka JET and Japan Info Swap
Upcoming Festivals and Events (Japanese)
Hakusan Snowman Festival, Feb. 8th t0 10th, 2013. If you contact the Hakusan International Association by January 31st, you can reserve a spot on a special tour bus for foreign residents and visitors. The cost of the bus tour is 1,000 yen. See the 2013 Snowman Festival Tour Flyer for details.
The weather has been awful lately, but nothing in Kanazawa is more beautiful in the winter than Kenrokuen (兼六園) in the snow!
Kenrokuen’s FREE winter light-up will be held
Friday, 4 February, to Sunday, 6 February 2011
and
Thursday, 10 February, to Sunday, 13 Feb. 2011 (including the holiday on Friday, 11 Feb., Constitution Day)
from 17:30-21:00 each night. (Last entry at 20:45.)
Access
Take the bus bound for “Kenrokuen shita” (兼六園下) from Kanazawa Station (East Gate bus-boarding area #3; West Gate bus-boarding area #4); get off at Kenrokuen-shita (兼六園下). The Kanazawa Loop Bus and the Flat Bus (look for the signs in English by the East Exit).
From Kanazawa Station, it’s about a 25 minute walk to Kenrokuen via Korinbo (香林坊).
Hot-Ishikawa (Japanese)
Leah Zoller is a second-year CIR in Anamizu and the editor of this blog. She thinks Kenrokuen in the snow is one of the only redeeming factors of the Ishikawa winter.
Japan, you have heard over and over, has four seasons. Though winter technically doesn’t begin until December 22nd (the solstice), both the weather and the department stores have moved into full winter mode. As you read this, you’re probably under your kotatsu eating something covered in Melty Kiss, with Heat Tec leggings and undershirts at the ready for your cold, windy, wet, dark tomorrow.
In addition to gangs of common colds, winter also brings with it another illness: Seasonal Affective Disorder, aptly anchronymized SAD. SAD isn’t the same as chronic or depression, though it can compound it, and it can start at any time in someone’s life. Those of you coming from the Southern Hemisphere are especially prone to SAD this season because you get two winters back to back–winter in your home country before coming here, and now winter in Ishikawa.
Most doctors believe that SAD is a response to a lack of natural light, often compounded by a change in nutrients as people change from a diet filled with summer and fall veggies and fruits to one…less filled with veggies and fruits. Symptoms include lethargy, disinterest in daily activities, oversleeping, overeating, anxiety, mood changes.
The good news is that even in Ishikawa, where the sun barely peaks through the clouds in the morning and it’s pitch black when you leave your school/BOE sometime around 4:30, there are lots of things you can do to winterize your mental health.
1. Try for 30 minutes in natural light–sunlight if you can get it–every day. This is a clinically proven way of beating the winter blues, and you will feel a little better almost immediately. If you have your lunches free and the weather permits, spend half an hour outside. If you don’t have lunch free, chances are, your school or BoE allows for one or two smoke breaks. Ask if you can use them to spend some quality time with the sun.
2. Wake up with the sun. Wait, don’t skip this one! Sunrise is at about 6:55 am here–morning sunlight probably starts just a little earlier than you wake up. Set one alarm for sunrise and one for your normal wakeup time, and just open the curtains when you hear the first one. Starting the day with some natural light makes a big difference.
3. Eat for your brain. Yes, chocolate is awesome. So is beer. So are tempura and croquettes. However, your brain needs some other things to get through the winter. During winter months, it’s best to up your consumption of folic acids, amino acids, omega 3s, protein, and vitamins C and D. Spinach (ほうれんそう), fatty fish like salmon and mackerel, mikans, milk, eggs, and whole grains like brown rice (玄米, genmai) and quinoa (キヌア) are great ways to come by these ingredients naturally. Stashing the mikans on your kotatsu along with (or instead of) the other snacks will also prevent guilt.
4. Don’t isolate yourself. Meet up with your friends often, especially your friends within the community. It’s easy to complain with other ALTs, CIRs, or foreigners about your troubles here, but much harder (or at least much more impolite) to complain to that nice lady at the bakery who likes to practice English with you, or the family that sometimes invites you out to dinner. Stay connected. After all, people all over the world have been driving the cold of winter away with the company of family and friends for millenia.
In two weeks, it will stop getting darker and start getting lighter every day. Meanwhile, your friends, Area Leaders, Prefectural Advisors, and JET hotline staff are there to help.
Stay warm and happy!
Lauren is an ALT in Komatsu and has a little too much experience with the winter blues from her days in Oregon and Minnesota.
Winter in Ishikawa is well known for plunging people into Phase 2 of culture shock or cultural fatigue. The honeymoon period has worn off, and you’re sick of waking up freezing, being asked if you can use chopsticks, and perhaps getting a little bored.
Road Rage
Phase 2 is the “I hate everything and everyone and I wanna go home” phase. You can’t solve Phase 2 overnight, but the best advice I received about conquering Phase 2 was when I was studying abroad at Kansai Gaidai.
New to the Ishikawa JET Blog? Here are the links to all of our posts (to date) on dealing with winter!
Get your heater in order:
“How To Use a Kerosene Heater”
“How to Clean and Store Your Kerosene Heater”
Buy a cheap kotatsu:
“Sales and Bargains! Woo-Hoo!”
Save energy while staying warm:
“Energy-Saving Tips for Staying Warm”
“Stay Warm: Use a Hot Water Bottle”
“Korinbo Uniqlo to Open” (get some heat tech!)
Drink lots of tea:
Don’t catch a cold:
“Kakkontou (葛根湯) – Prevent Your Cold with Ancient Chinese Herbs”
Take care of your skin:
Hide out in a cafe (and use their heat!):
“Restaurant Review: Sanuki no Udon-ya Hatabou and Café Moritat”
Have a warm and safe winter!
Leah Zoller is a second-year CIR in Anamizu and the editor of this blog. She would like to thank all the bloggers for their hard work writing these articles.
Photo: Wide Island View
The folks behind the Hiroshima JET blog, Wide Island View, have decided to team up with the Ishikawa JET blog and do a little cross-prefectural promotion. As part of that, we’d like to help advertise the Winter Photo Contest — with prizes — over at the Wide Island View website.
Send in your best winter photo of Japan, and get a chance to win some fun prizes, sponsored by NetPrice Japan.
Your photo must:
Interested? You’re competing against fellow foreigners, not professionals here.
Submit your photos to: wivcontests (at) gmail (dot) com and include
Winners will get their choice of 3 prizes (see their site for pics!) and will have their photos displayed on the Englipedia website — whee, bragging rights! Other photo submissions may also featured in the Shashin Spotlight on the Wide Island View website.
The deadline is April 1st, 2010. Winners will be announced on April 5th on the Wide Island View website!
Check it out and help represent Ishikawa in a faraway prefecture!
While it’s hard to avoid using electric heaters (space heaters, kerosene heaters, and kotatsu) while at home in the winter, you can reduce your overnight electric use by using a hot water bottle to stay warm in bed. Sold at home-goods stores, the Japanese 湯たんぽ (yutanpo) are hot water bottles made of durable hard plastic and come with a soft cover.
Colorful Hot Water Bottle; image from Amazon.com
Photo: Spiegel
Last year I attended the Snowman Tour put on by the Hakusan International Association, and though it required taking a few hours of nenkyuu, I highly recommend it! The Snowman Tour takes you up to a small town festival that’s difficult to access by bus. You might find it inconvenient that the festival is on a Friday, and that’s because it’s intentionally made to be inconvenient to attend. Shiramine is so small that if too many people attended the festival, it would be impossible to move around there. It’s a small town, Japan-insider’s type of event.
Last year, the snow wasn’t nearly as thick, but there were plenty of little handmade snowmen of all shapes and sizes littering the streets and alleyways. There are foodstands abundantly scattered, and the 2 hours of free time scheduled is even enough for you to relax in the onsen after your adventures in the snow.
Important Details:
When: FRIDAY, February 12, 2010. Approx. 3:00pm – 9:00pm (depends on your bus pick-up point).
Bus Schedule: 2:30pm at Rifare (in Kanazawa), 3:10 at Hakusan International Salon (5 mins from JR Matto Station), 3:20 at Hakusan City Hall. Bus will arrive at the festival at Shiramine at 5:00pm. Bus will leave Shiramine at 7:00pm.
Event: Free time from 5:00pm – 7:00pm. Enjoy the food, snowmen, and onsen!
Cost: Free (but bring money for food and the onsen if you’ll use it).
Bring: warm jacket and boots, a towel for the onsen (if you plan to use it)
Application Deadline: February 3, 2010 – space for 15 people only!
Contact: Keiko Uno 076-274-9520 (English is okay)
Email: k-uno [at] city.hakusan.lg.jp (English is okay)
**Note: This event was advertised to JETs, but non-JETs may be able to join it if they have space and if you ask nicely. I think that they often don’t know how to get information out to non-JET foreigners who live in Ishikawa.
Go on your own!
If you’re feeling adventurous, hop on a bus early on Friday (or Saturday/Sunday). Buses leave from Kanazawa Station, but I believe the last train leaves toward Shiramine at 14:30. Always double check the bus schedule before you head off into the snowy wilderness! If you opt to go by car, the trip will take you about 2 hours from Kanazawa.
Want a bigger snow festival? Check out last year’s post on the Sapporo Snow Festival!
Photo: Creative Commons via Wikipedia
If you’re located around the Sea of Japan (Hello, Kanazawa), then you’ve likely been lucky enough to experience thundersnow — the exciting combination of snow, flashes of lighting, and thunder that shakes your apartment walls.
In fact, here in Nonoichi (next to Kanazawa), the past few days of snow have been filled with class-disrupting claps of thunder as the snow pummels the ground below.
So what’s up with thundersnow? Well, The Straight Dope gives a fairly readable explanation of why thundersnow occurs, but it basically comes down to the fact that lightning and thunder occurs when there’s a lot of movement, which generates electrical charges that need to be released from the clouds. This movement typically occurs when warm air is rising, and warm air usually rises when the weather is hot and there’s a lot of humidity. In other words, winter isn’t your typical situation for lightning and thunder — think of your dry, cracked lips in the winter months.
Now, I’m not a meteorologist, so bear with my attempt at understanding this… Water is often warmer than the surrounding winter air, so it could be that the “warm” water in the Sea of Japan heats up the freezing winter air (by “heat up”, I mean it makes the air slightly warmer than freezing), and that air rises — as heat does — creating the fabulous umbrella-snapping wind we’ve come to love, and ultimately creating a lot of static charge as all that air rubs up against itself, and needs to release the static electricity as lightning and thunderous booming.
And why the joyous apartment-shaking? Well, thunder does that in summer here, too, but apparently thundersnow can only be heard within 2-3 kilometers of where the lightning strikes, so maybe when we hear the thunder, we’re just hearing the stuff that’s really close to us, so it’s obviously going to be LOUD. Also, sound can apparently travel better through cold, dense air, so we may be able to hear the thunder a little more effectively in winter. But then again, I’d think that the snow would muffle the sound more or something.
Let me point out again that I’m not a meteorologist. And the only science I took in college was geology, so…
Interested in learning more about our fabulous thundersnow? ABC News wrote an interesting article that will make you feel special for living somewhere where you can reliably experience thundersnow. Wikipedia also has an article about it.
Upcoming Events
