I don't think just one story about the cold weather can adequately portray the snowy mess that our little town has recently become, so here's another one for you. And if the temperature drops any further, you can bet there will be more rants right here in the Stories section.

My bicycle has sat unused in the shed downstairs for weeks now. The daily sunshine is powerless to stop the layers of ice from piling up. Sometimes I see locals hacking and chipping away at it with cool-looking axes and shovels; but for the most part, the city of Yamagata is now buried beneath 3 to 6 inches of solid ice.

Angie noticed that all the high school girls are forever slipping on the icy sidewalks to and from school every day. When one slips, she yelps and grabs hold of a nearby friend, who usually slips in turn. But why, after many winters of practice, are they still slipping so often? Perhaps because their shoes (part of their required school uniform) are all completely flat-soled with no tread whatsoever.

I should point out, however, that even with my new ski-grade snow boots, I slip far more often than any of them. I quickly learned a new Japanese word, suberu, a verb which loosely translates as "to slip and fall down hard on your buttocks while a dozen nearby high school girls laugh at you."

I have yet to catch the bus up to nearby Mt. Zao for a hearty afternoon of top-notch skiing. It's not that I haven't found spare time...I'm just still debating the merits of being even colder than I already am. Can skiing really be entertaining enough to justify the endless runny nose and frostbitten fingers?

Okay, so that brings me to our apartment. If you are not yet familiar with the types of weather insulation materials used in traditional Japanese residences, let me see if I can sum them up for you: there are none, insofar as I can tell. But when Angie jogs around the apartment in her flannel pajamas, crying about her frozen toes and being able to see her own breath, I have plenty of tools at my disposal to help out the situation:

• Colored blinking Christmas lights. These convey a sense of warmth, so they're strung all over the apartment. Ahhh, I can practically feel the fire in the imaginary hearth behind the imaginary Christmas tree.
• Infrared space heater. If you haven't previously encountered this type of heater, there's a good reason: shining a bright infrared light in an attempt to produce actual heat is futile in the face of subzero indoor temperatures. But, this heater does rotate, so...uhh...that's a plus. It works great if you sit directly in front of it, but I think the radiation you receive in return might somehow offset the benefits of the heat.
• Infrared kotatsu table. Picture a coffee table. Now cover it with a thick blanket. Now, shine a really bright infrared light underneath the table. Voila! That's the primary source of heat in our apartment. It works great. Well, sort of great. Actually, it cooks your legs to a crisp while your arms and head are left out in the cold to freeze.
• Hot Carpet. That's its real name, stop laughing. It's a section of carpet big enough for two people to sleep on, plus it has electrical heating wires running everywhere through it. Sounds useful, right? We put it under our futon bed each night. Even though we're not supposed to, we also leave it running all night long while we sleep. It's not the fire hazard I mind so much, but I do wonder if I am unknowingly cooking my internal organs over time. On the plus side, maybe the electromagnetic radiation will grant me mutant powers one day soon.
• The Infamous Kerosene Space Heater. This bad boy can heat up a room in no time flat. How does it accomplish its lofty goal? By burning kerosene fuel and firing the hot fumes out into the room. This device is the ultimate paradox, it should be studied in college philosophy courses. Okay, wrap your brain around this: because the carbon monoxide fumes are of course highly toxic, I must occasionally ventilate the area completely, thereby immediately restoring the room's temperature to its previous subzero level. So, I heat a room for an hour, then I get a little dizzy and sick and I think "Gee, was my vision that cloudy yesterday?" and then I just figure I'll lie down and go to sleep because I'm suddenly so-o-o tired...and then Angie shakes me awake and throws open the windows and doors, and I live to tell the tale.

So, is being warm in winter worth filling my house with poisonous gases and a panoply of radiation? Yes. Absolutely. And another quarter of a million Yamagata residents apparently agree with me. And one more nice bonus: the bright orange glows from the two infrared heaters remind Angie and me of a bright summertime Florida sun. Now if only they had even a fraction of the sun's power to radiate heat, that would be something.