Ice and mask protection!

There's nothing too much interesting going on around here but I thought I'd check in.

Japan is cold and though I don't live in the coldest part of Japan, this area is cold enough for me!!!  This morning we opened our curtains in our bedroom to this....!

This is the inside of our bedroom window.  The condensation has frozen INSIDE!  On mornings like this I wonder why we do this to ourselves.  Why do we sleep in an icebox?  Surely there must be a better way to live.

We do have an air-conditioner/heater in our bedroom.  We probably use it three or four times a year in the absolutely hottest and most humid nights of summer.  But we never use it in the winter (even though it does heat).  Japanese houses (except I have heard on the Northern island it is different) don't have central heating.  Some houses will have heated floors which will warm up one room or another pretty well, but most of us just use kerosene space heaters and electric carpets to heat a room.  This means that though the living room can get toasty warm, the other rooms in the house are like ice.  I provide my upstairs cats with an heated mat and blankets covering their "cat cave" but the rest of us stay most of the day in the only warm room in the house.

Recently at night I will zap a water bottle type heating pad in the microwave and tuck it at the foot of my bed but that is all the heat I get there unless I generate it myself or have a cat or two that is willing to cuddle.  I guess we don't like artificial heat while we sleep... or maybe we don't want exorbitant electric bills.  Whatever the reason, our room really does turn into an icebox in dead winter!

I have found another good reason to wear a mask!

On Thursday I was walking to the school for crosswalk duty when...  CRASH!  I tripped (all by myself) and landed face first onto the pavement.  I picked myself up but since I'd hit my chin I turned directly around and went back home and asked Tetsu to drive me to the school.  I figured nothing was broken as I could open my mouth and my hands and legs worked...  Tetsu was worried but he took me to school and waited in the car for 45 minutes to make sure I didn't get dizzy or pass out or something.  I didn't.  When I got home I finally checked myself for injuries.  A scraped knee...  A swollen chin.  But all my cold weather clothing (let's see...  I was wearing fleece pajamas under snow pants and a heavy fleece shirt and a down jacket and a long black uniform coat plus a thick neck warmer, mask, hat, socks and Ugg boots) hindered my movements causing the fall to begin with, but because of all the padding, very little damage was rendered to my body.

As the day wore on, I did get a headache and napped or read a book and felt very decrepit and the next day when I went to the doctor my shoulder and arm muscles were aching (because they caught a lot of my fall).  But the doctor said I didn't have to worry about a concussion.  And by then my chin had bloomed to a beautiful shade of purple BUT thanks to the mask (which had also saved most of my face) I can still go grocery shopping with my purple chin hidden beneath the mask!  I will give masks another positive checkmark!

My aches and pains are going away but I'm resolved to do some exercises to practice picking up my feet a bit more deliberately!