As I am caught inside huddled underneath my kotatsu with the kitten passed out between my legs, I find myself pondering the mysteries of why in the world this place was named the Land of the Rising Sun.
Rising Sun indeed. I think I've seen the sun for collectively maybe 24 hours total since getting here three months ago. We're on Typhoon 23 currently (the 10th so far to hit Japan and the biggest yet in years) and I can't imagine there's going to be any stop to the relentless march of crappy weather. Everyone tells me the weather is great in October but honestly I don't really see where they get that from. They are Japanese of course and they do live here, so I suppose that makes them authorities of some sort, right? Regardless, it's raining like hell outside.
Let me inform you of the wonders of the kotatsu. It is a low "Japanese-style" table with a blanket underneath it and another blanket draped across the top. On the underside of the table is a small heating element. Imagine, you have a little heater creating beautiful heat that's trapped by the blankets. Imagine the wind is howling outside and there's no such thing as insulation in Southern Japan. Imagine my kitty has found no better place to sleep than under said kotatsu. She is absolutely passed out. I find no problem with this, considering the rest of the evening she was pestering me every five seconds by climbing up my leg.
If you live in Japan and you don't have a kotatsu, you are insane. This is probably the coolest invention to come out of this country since ... uh ... Hello Kitty vibrators. I kid. But there really is such thing as a Hello Kitty vibrator. The coolest thing aside from kotatsu, I think, is the technically-advanced cellphones they have here. These are the times when I think "why the heck hasn't this stuff made it to the United States?"
Then I realize Japan is in a class all by itself.
It's no wonder, looking outside at the sheets of rain, these people came out a little ... "different."