The clock beside my head reads 11:45am. A dull ache reaches from behind my eyes and spreads through my entire body. The liquor from another all night wild time in Kiyamachi refuses to leave my system and all I want to do is get a little rest. The two tabs of aspirin refuse to work and the hot humid air of my room lend little aid to my tired body. It‘s the middle of summer in Kyoto Japan and the modern convenience most of us take for granted, central air, is non-existent. My hand blindly searches beside my bed for the little remote that controls the somewhat effectual cooler (which also acts as a heater) for my room, even though I know that the cool air that the machine steadily spits out will quickly be warmed by radiant heat seeping through my non-insulated walls. I comfort myself with the knowledge that soon it will be Fall and the temperatures will fall to a more bearable level.
Kyoto is a neat little geographical wonder. It’s located in a niche between mountains with the only non-mountainous outlet in the direction of Osaka, sort of like a dead end in an alley. Because of that the air that comes into this town just sits. When it is hot it’s really hot, when it is cold my refrigerator seems like a nice place to be. Typhoons that hit the other parts of Kansai seem to always pass us by leaving only a nice shower in its wake.
Now why, being considered a 1st world nation, don’t they have simple things like central air and insulation? How is a single small cooler located at one end of a large room next to a door to the outside supposed to lower the temperature and keep it there? I’ve asked this question and many others, but rarely get any intelligible answers. The phrase, ‘that’s the way we do things here’ seems to be the favorite. Me, I just chalk it up to the fact that ‘It’s Japan.’ The catch-all answer that after 5 years of living here has come to explain much of the unexplainable.
