Winter is settling in and the nights are getting colder. Fortunately, that means you’ll soon be able to slumber snugly in a Rilakkuma sleeping bag!
winter (Page 5)
As the man with the sword told us repeatedly, “Winter is coming.” And while some of us are happy to play in the snow, not everyone is so excited about the chilly weather. Some of us, in fact, would much prefer to stay inside and sleep in the kotatsu.
Or, if you happen to be an adorable kitten, you might prefer to just to hang out inside your human’s foot-warming heated carpet.
Winter is undoubtedly the worst season to be alone in Japan. Soon singles will be starting the annual desperate search for the special someone to spend Christmas with and it’s not hard to see why. Having someone to cuddle up to during the upcoming cold, long months is far preferable to fighting off the chill by yourself.
Of course, not everyone wants to jump into a relationship just for a little extra body heat, and now thanks to one Japanese electronics maker and their kotatsu for one, singles just might be in for the warmest winter yet.
One of the most wonderful things about a Japanese winter is the abundance of hot drinks that become available at convenience stores and vending machines on street corners. There’s nothing quite like popping a coin into a machine on a freezing cold night or while making your way to work, only to have a piping hot can delivered into your frozen palms; it’s an experience that’s almost as satisfying as actually drinking the hot beverage and warming yourself from the inside out!
Stumbling across a good hot soup other than corn potage when scouring the drinks display is always a rare bonus and now that’s something we can look forward to, especially after a night of drinking, with the new canned miso soup from Nagatanien. Filled with the power of ornithine, an amino acid abundant in clams, this is a traditional hangover remedy from Japan, now packed in a can!
Depending on where you are, winters in Japan can be bitterly cold or actually rather temperate, but due to a general lack of insulation, it seems like most Japanese homes are always a little cold. But this general chilliness gave birth to that magical piece of furniture, the kotatsu. Basically a covered table with a heater attached, the kotatsu is often the centerpiece of a Japanese living room and a great way to get in some family time.
And with these new cat-themed kotatsu covers, cushions, and hoodies, it’ll be twice as difficult to pull yourself away from the kotatsu on a chilly winter morning!
Summer has already given way to fall, and those cold winter nights will soon be upon us. As economical as Japan’s method of heating individual rooms can be—usually involving air conditioning units or kerosene stoves—it does have its issues, the biggest of which being that only a couple of rooms are heated at any one time, leaving everywhere else in the house freezing cold. During winter, trips to the bathroom in a Japanese house are no fun.
But this winter brings with it a new clothing item that is going to solve all your lounging and heating issues in one fell swoop. This light-weight but incredibly warm one-piece is so comfortable, it’s like you’re wearing nothing at all.
Japanese homes are notorious for being poorly insulated, in the wintertime often leaving you feeling just as cold indoors as you do outside.
Despite having permanent fur coats (lucky them!) our pets can still feel the chill and will do what they can to stay cozy. We’ve already shown you cats and space heaters, and dogs in kotatsu, but now we bring you some adorable hamsters in sleeves.
Heavy winds, low visibility and snow drifts the size of houses. What do you do? Go to that lecture at 8:30 or grab as many blankets as you can and binge watch Dragon Ball? Although the answer might be pretty simple for some university students in Japan, the ones in Hokkaido know there is no such thing as a snow day. Freshman students at Hokkaido University are sometimes amazed to encounter the incredibly snowy weather conditions that face them on their way to class. There is not much else they can do but bundle up, snap a few pictures and share them with the Internet.
We’ve collected some of the best pics taken by Hokkaido’s students this winter. Would you go to class in this weather?
Though spring is only a few months away, Tokyo is still downright cold these days. Of course, if you’re from a colder climate, you probably annoy your friends by running around in shorts asking why they’re shivering, but for many people here, it’s still pretty cold. Whether it’s the sea breeze zipping through the streets or some sort of reverse heat island effect, we’re not sure, but it is enough to make mornings downright brutal.
And people aren’t the only ones cursing the cold–our furry feline friends are none too fond of winter either! But unlike humans, they come with built-in scarves. Check out some of Japan’s cutest cats wrapping themselves up nice and warm with their tails.
From afar, it seems like this building in Japan has given its lobby’s floor lights a fancy new makeover by adding cat statues to them. On closer inspection, however, we can see that these are actually real cats that have decided to position themselves right on top of the light sources and are being illuminated like heavenly beings.
To someone raised in an area that receives little to no snow in the wintertime, living in a snowy region might seem like a lot of fun, what with all the sledding, snowball fights, and easy access to ski resorts. But it’s not all fun and games when you need to shovel through feet of snow just to leave your house or to get your car out of your driveway.
But maybe to someone who hasn’t grown up having to shovel heaps of snow each winter, snow-shoveling could be a fun experience too. At least, that’s what the Akiota-cho Sightseeing Association in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, seems to be hoping as they try to lure city-dwellers to their 4th annual “Heavy Snow Region Experience Tour“. However, this tour has some net-users questioning why anyone would want to pay 5,000 yen (approximately US$50) to shovel snow for someone else.
Perhaps the (in)famous pigeon dating sim Hatoful Boyfriend has given the nation a soft spot for the feathered creatures, because Japanese people have been going crazy for cute pics of pigeons all fluffed up in the cold.
Remember the fun you used to have making snowmen when you were just a little sprout of a kid? Sure, your fingers would get numbed to the bone and your knees would get soaked from kneeling in the snow as you sculpted away for hours. But those little niggles were forgotten once you looked upon your finished masterpiece, before running inside to beg for some spare clothes and a carrot nose to decorate your newest frosty friend. Then he melted and you felt a little abandoned, a little lost, as though a part of your childhood had vanished, eroded like so much evaporated snow… Just me? Anyway, making stuff out of snow is awesome, and if you don’t believe us, check out this gallery of the best cute and wacky snow sculptures from China and Japan!
Chilly as winter may get in Japan, we’ve got to admit there are some cool things about the coldest part of the year. For example, the Christmas decorations around Tokyo are amazing, and even if you’re not feeling up to braving the cold weather, Japan offers a couple of ways to make winter more bearable even if you’re staying indoors. High on the list are mikan, the mandarin oranges that’re at their tastiest in winter, and kotatsu, the blanket-covered, heater-equipped tables that’re so cozy it’s almost impossible to pull yourself out of one once you get situated comfortably.
Don’t take our word for it, though, as these adorable cats lounging though a Japanese winter serve as far better spokescreatures for mikan and kotatsu than we ever could.
When Japanese people decide to become pet owners, they really throw themselves into it. Perhaps because of the relative scarcity of pet-friendly apartments in the city, dog owners in particular tend to be either home owners or have slightly higher incomes and can afford to live somewhere that allows them to live with their four-legged pal. For that reason, many pet-owning urbanites think nothing of buying expensive leashes and clothing items for their furry friends or paying exorbitant sums to have their dog shampooed and expertly groomed, and you’ll sometimes even see people riding the trains with their dogs in strollers or designer carriers.
We’re not really ones for dolling our pooches up, and our cats wouldn’t be seen dead in half the outfits that are available online, but this year’s must-have dog fashion item is one that we could definitely got on board with: tummy-warming “haramaki”.
Winter has been homing in hard and fast this year, hasn’t it? Two weeks ago a massive snowstorm invaded America, and a cold wave has been sinking into Japan this week, already causing unexpected snowfall two months early in certain parts of the country. It feels almost as if Elsa is throwing a fit because Baymax has been getting more attention lately.
In such unpredictable freezing temperatures, it’s best to stay at home with the heater on so you’ll be warm and dry. All the better if you have a huggable, furry pet at home who wouldn’t mind cuddling up with you. Keep an eye on your pets when you’re using a heater though, or else they might end up like this unfortunate feline who got a pair of charred “wings” on its back!
Nothing kills a great winter vacation more than coming back to find out your pipes have burst. That water can be flowing out of the broken pipe for days before you return home to find you have a new indoor swimming pool. It only has to happen once to forever taint your holidays with an extremely nagging “did we turn the water off?”
With temperatures dipping below zero in many parts of the world, each day is a potential pipe bursting tragedy. However, sometimes two wrongs really do make a right, and the horrible outcome of water soaking everything with Jack Frost blowing through create a really spectacular winter wonderland.
The Japanese sure do love their robots, don’t they? It seems like every couple of months there’s a new robo-creation being unveiled to the public, sprung from the minds of Japan’s master robotic engineers. Today, we’d like to introduce you to this cute little trundling yellow fella, Yuki Taro! As we all know, winter is coming (we should probably say “winter is here”, but that has less dramatic punch) and with it a flurry of snowstorms and bad weather that can seriously disrupt people’s lives. And who really has the time or energy to shovel snow all day?
Enter Yuki Taro. This snow-gobbling little guy is here to make all your problems melt away – as long as they’re snow-related, that is…
France may have delicious bread, but Japan has cute bread (even if it doesn’t always turn out as planned). I mean, they are the creators of Anpan-man, after all!
Adding yet another almost-too-cute-to-eat bread treat to the already long list, a bakery called “Cafe Blue Jean” located in the Hotel New Hankyu Osaka, brings us “Snowman-pan.” These seasonal treats are breads, shaped and decorated to look like darling, little snowmen.
Every cat owner has, at one time or another, experienced the soul-crushing disappointment that comes from giving your cat a thoughtful gift, only to have them throw it back in your face in favor of a paper ball or a plain old cardboard box. It’s almost as if cats the world over are in on some sort of conspiracy designed to make their owners feel inadequate. And that’s exactly what happened to “kitty blogger” Udama when they attempted to create a cosy, cat-sized kotatsu to delight their feline family members. As our pictures show, the experiment didn’t exactly go according to plan…
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