A little about the cold

When I came back to Tsushima, I was prepared for the bitter cold and wind. Well, as prepared as one can be for having to teach classes without being able to feel one's fingers. Anytime I think of complaining about how cold it is, I look down at myself, wearing three full layers of clothing, then I look over at the students. The girls have to wear their knee-length skirts year-round, and many of them walk 15-30 minutes to school. They have full-length stockings they're allowed to wear, but most of them opt for the knee-high socks. I asked one of them why they would willingly expose their knees and thighs to the bitter wind. She said the socks are thicker, and they'd rather be able to feel their toes than their knees. My first thought was, why not wear the socks over the stockings, or vice versa? I say that because I'm a guy, and because for me there comes a point at which you sacrifice fashion to avoid hypothermia. When I suggested this as a solution--wearing both instead of choosing one--she giggled and told all the other girls in the class about it. Girls are weird.

From an absolute perspective, it doesn't get all that cold here, especially considering I'm at roughly the same latitude as Missouri. I think the lowest the temperature got all winter was -3 or -4 Celsius, which is in the mid-twenties for those of the Fahrenheit persuasion. I saw it snow twice, and both times it melted by 10am. Considering all that, the wintertime temperature range here is comparable to Georgia. As I've said, though, that comparison isn't worth beans, because people here spend most of their time in air that's the same temperature as outside. This might have something to do with the rural nature of the island, of course, but I get the feeling from other ALTs--even the ones posted in the main cities--that it's pretty common throughout Japan. Commerce--malls, stores, restaurants--and government offices have heaters, but even they don't all have central heating. Most restaurants here are literally the downstairs of a two-story house, so the customer area is small enough to be served by a (yes, one) heating unit.

At school, though, the only heaters are in the staff room and the main office. Every other space in the building is only as warm as the sun makes it. The classrooms are pretty bad, but they at least are sealed off from the outside and store the warmth from the sun. The corridors are the worst. Valuing (wisely, I think) fresh air over a few degrees of warmth, my schools leave windows cracked open in all the hallways, which makes for a wonderfully frigid walk to and from the classrooms. Again, anytime I think of complaining, I walk by a few pairs of shaved, skinny, trembling little legs, often bare from the mid-thigh to the calf.

If anyone reading this is like I was before I came here--if you've never spent a day or two running through your regular routine in temperatures that hover just north of freezing--then you simply don't know what I'm talking about. I try not to make concrete judgmental claims like that, but I'm willing to bet that most people born and bred in America cannot fathom what it's like to be cold to your core, and to know you won't be warm until you go to bed. As a teacher, it's miserable because you can't feel your fingers, which makes writing on the chalkboard an adventure, and your students spend the entire class shivering. I'm sure a few of my students couldn't follow what I was saying over the sound of their teeth chattering.

When it first got this cold, I spent a fair amount of time grumbling about how backwards it is to stubbornly refuse to install heating units. In fact, I'm pretty sure one of the more popular winter sports among ALTs is cursing Japan for its barbarous negligence of what we regard as such a basic human need as climate control. I know it was a common dead horse topic for us on the island. It isn't even about our suffering--we've had several discussions about how unhealthy it must be to force the students to wear uniforms that subject them to such bitter cold.

However, after thinking about it some more, I'm not as incensed about it. I've realized that bitter cold is just what the people here are used to. It's all they know. They have no more conception of life spent consistently at 70 degrees Fahrenheit than we do of taking our outdoor shoes off when going inside, or of staying at school until 7 or 8 in the evening six days a week to make sure our students are prepared for their college entrance examinations. They don't know any different, and--which is more--this is the way of doing things that works for the Japanese. Just like Calvin's dad told him: it builds character. It may seem outrageous to outsiders that the students are subjected to such conditions, but they don't know any differently. After high school, when they all settle
into adult life, they'll get to enjoy the creature comforts of cushioned chairs and central heating, and be able to look back with pride on what they suffered through.