Japan can get awfully hot on a summer night, but there are some things worse than getting sweaty.

Japan is extremely humid during the summer. That means that not only can it be swelteringly hot during the morning and afternoon, the temperature isn’t likely to cool off very much even after the sun goes down.

For those who don’t want to run their air conditioner all night long, opening up a window to get a cooling evening breeze blowing in can be a tempting idea. But while that might be a nice way to relax before bedtime, a manga from Japanese Twitter user @tomogna makes a compelling argument for closing, and locking, your windows before you hit the sack.

▼ The first apartment I lived in my myself had a floorplan like this.
In the summer, I’d sleep almost completely in the nude (for some reason I’d end up sleeping on the floor instead of in my bed).

Before we go on, let’s take a closer look at the floorplan. It shows a studio apartment, with the door at the top opening into an entryway (玄関), with a kitchenette (台所) and small window (小窓) to one side, and the shower (浴室) and bathroom (トイレ) to another. Bisecting the apartment are a pair of sliding doors that can be left open, or closed to form a partition between the front half of the room and the back, where the closet (収納) and bed (ベッド) are.

Okay, let’s continue with @tomogna’s story.

▼  <clank> <clank> <clank>
One night, I awoke to a harsh clanking sound.
“What the heck is that…?” I wondered as I sleepily turned on the overheard light.

The sound was coming from the front of the apartment, and since the dividing doors had been left open, @tomogna turned to that direction.

▼ I saw a man with his upper body stretched through my kitchen window, trying to pull the chain off my front door from the inside.
Always make sure you lock your windows, even the small ones!

Thankfully, when the light came on, the startled intruder quickly fled the scene.

“Even now, I can’t help worrying about what would have happened if he’d gotten the chain off…” tweeted @tomogna. While chills down the spine might seem like an effective way to cool off in the summer, leaving your home vulnerable to intruders isn’t the safest way to beat the heat, so locking the windows closed and investing in an electric fan is probably the smarter way to get some air circulation going as you’re heading to bed.

Source: Twitter/@tomogna via IT Media
Images: Twitter/@tomogna