It's getting remarkably cold here in Japan - which isn't so surprising considering it's nearly January - but still, the chill came on very quickly.
I've noticed a few things about the cold this year, which for me, at least, are pretty interesting.
1) My son doesn't seem to feel the cold half as much as me and my wife. He will happily run around in a t-shirt, with nothing on his feet (in the house), while we're wrapped up and wearing socks. It's particularly noticeable during the night as he gets hot under blankets, which sadly makes him sweat and thereby sets off his eczema. The dry air certainly isn't helping him, either, but we've stopped using soap when we bath him for the time being and that seems to relieve his itching a little.
2) Our bath has a feature to stop it freezing. Japanese people don't wash in the bath, they simply use it to warm themselves, so it's not unusual to leave water in the bath to either heat up and use the following day, or pump into the washing machine in order to reuse it there. For the first time the other day, we noticed that the bath was turning itself on and wondered what was happening - it turns out that it has a special feature to stop the water from freezing which comes on automatically when it gets too cold. See, I told you it was getting cold!
