Senshinen (or: the curse of Japanese air conditioning)

The place I live at right now belongs to the Takaoka campus and is usually used to house teachers that have come to this school for only a short time. Or then, as in my case, exchange students. It is a place with a community kitchen and different western and Japanese style rooms. At the start I wanted to take a traditional room but then it turned out that those will be used soon for some kind of exhibition or meeting or something, so I took the cheapest room there is, the western single.

It's very small, but I don't think that's a bad thing.
With only 20kg allowed to bring on the plane I don't have much stuff anyways, and I'm ok with living in a small space. I'm spending more time at school anyway. My bathroom is especially tiny, but that I actually really like it. I think it's a good example of well-used space. Generally, with it being a place that is used my different people, it logically is quite bleak and nondescriptive. But oh well, it could be worse.

The first thing that is a bit strange, is that right now I am the only one living here. With this many rooms it is a quite big, unfamiliar place, so going down to get some food from the fridge at night is a bit weird sometimes. But then it's funny to sing really loud in the hallway, because as empty as they are, they actually echo a bit. Also, a guardman comes through four times every night, which is also the reason why the light in the hallway has to stay on all the time (I am not quite sure about the logic behind this, but a sign in the staircase told me: 'Leave the light on for the guardman' and 'Don't rip of this sign'. Maybe Japanese guardmen are scared of the dark? Would that make them more effective guardmen? Or are they only scared of western hooligans who rip signs from walls?) I have met two guardmen until now, and they both had a flashlight with them, so I really don't know what this energy waste is about. Then again, the words 'Japanese' and 'energy waste' definitely go well together. In fact, when it comes to how the Japanese heat their homes, Energy Waste even deserves capital letters.

Because the Japanese have neither central heating nor properly isolated walls.

No radiator attached to the wall anywere and don't even think of something like underfloor heating. The Japanese heat by air conditioners. Yep, the things that Europeans usually tend to use only in summer, the thing that blows out cool air when it's 30 degrees outside. Well, they can blow out hot air, too. But, the interesting thing is, while a normal radiator will heat according to how high you put the dial, an air conditioning system will always try to keep a room at certain temperature, which means, they don't blow only hot air but also cold air. They interchange between blowing really hot and cold air, to keep, let's say, 20 degrees in a room. So, if I sit on my bed, underneath my air conditioner, I am alternately sweating and freezing.

And nights are nice! I've tried putting the thing to 25 degrees for some time before going to sleep and then switch it off overnight, but that means first I can't sleep because it's so hot and toward morning I wake up with cold feet because the room cools out really fast. So now I sleep with the thing set to 20. The noise is not the problem, in Finland I live in the center of Lahti after all, it's definitely louder there, but it just annoys me to no end to waste so much energy when it could all be so much easier already just by better isolation! It seems Senshinen is build to keep the cold in, and warmth out! When I go out downstairs to fix myself some food I freeze, because in the rest of the house it's about 10 degrees. The 'living room' should rather be called 'room to keep dead things from rotting'. And if I wanted it warm, I would have to use the four electric heaters and the heat would, if I'm lucky, maybe stay until 4 in the morning and at half to 8 I'd be freezing my toes off once again.

At least those portable radiators only produce heat and no cold air – actually, maybe I should take one upstairs and keep away from the air conditioning...

So, whenever I cook I basically put on four layers of clothes, then carry my food up into my room, which feels like a desert after being downstairs. Then I eat, wait for the food to be turned into heat in my own body and go back down to clean up. On school mornings it's especially nice.

Did I mention I also have to separately switch on the heating for my water?

So, my alarm sounds and I get up and switch on the heating for the water. Then I run down the stairs to get my breakfast, run back up, shivering. I heat some water for my coffee(god thanks there's a cooker in my room!) allthewhile letting the cold water run off in the bathroom so I can take a shower with warm water. That's a waste of at least two litres every morning. Then I dress, eat, pack my stuff, put on sweater and jacket and put the dishes of my breakfast into the kitchen sink. Then I put on my shows.

Then I open the outside door...

… and get a heatstroke.

Over the last days it's been around 17-20 degrees, which makes it a difference of about 10 degrees from inside Senshinen compared to outside, so I usually take off my jacked when I go outside. Oh, wait, that's not that unusual. I take off my jacket when I go out of the school, too.... yes, on sunny days, it is colder inside the schoolbuilding, than outside.

Go figure. 

entrance area

 kitchen

 community living room

upstairs hallway

my room...

 and bathroom 

 Senshinen`s backyard, with fish in the little pond, at least one of them brightly orange