Family Friendly

While winters in Japan’s more mountainous and northern regions get pretty chilly, here in Nagoya, temperatures rarely drop below zero. However, for some reason, I constantly feel frozen to my marrow, and I bet I’m not the only one. This is partly because few homes and office buildings are sufficiently insulated. There is an urban legend that earthquake vibrations can cause insulation fibres to rub together, causing friction fires, but it’s most likely because construction methods prioritise aerating buildings during the sweltering summers over winter warmth. Another problem is that you will often find that, the moment an office room warms up, one of your coworkers will force open a window in the name of air circulation. Furthermore, homes and buildings are rarely centrally heated, for no discernible reason that I can discover. But it’s not as if the Japanese are invulnerable to the cold. No, in this chilliest of seasons, all you ever hear is people complaining ‘samui’ [cold], repeating it again and again in a mantra, as if the simple act of doing so will repel the chill. Which of course, it doesn’t. So, what do the Japanese do to keep warm in winter? Irori Historically, Japanese had…