cheerfulI noticed that the portable heaters we had going in the staff room before were gone now, and I asked D. where they were.
“They’re in storage. O-sensei and a guy with a truck took them away yesterday.”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s after April 1st! You don’t need heat anymore.”
Uh-huh. (He wasn’t buying it either.) Maybe it sounds less absurd in Japanese. And there’s no heat – the central system is shut off now, too.
D. also said that there’s no swimming before a certain day – it could be thirty degrees or more, yet people would look at you funny if you went to the beach (but we could still get away with it since we’re foreigners). And no air conditioning either, no matter how hot it gets. And, again, no heat on or after April 1st.
I figure this makes about as much sense as keeping the snowploughs and salters off the roads in the event of a December or April snowstorm, with the city citing the fact that it’s not winter and not the right time for clearing roads.
But this is Japan. =)