Beauty Secrets

Tuesday morning, I woke up to the sound of the wind rattling my front door, and could almost feel the draft through my thin walls. I must have hit the snooze button on my small plastic alarm clock four or five times; the tapping of the rain against the windowpane urged me not to climb out of my cozy futon. When I finally did get up and draw back the curtains, I felt like I was looking out on the deck of a ship at sea, not my courtyard. The rain coming down in sheets was moving horizontally, matching the branches of the trees and bushes as they were pulled by the wind. In my groggy morning thoughts, the only thing that could solidify was “Maybe there’s such a thing as a rain day. I can’t possibly be expected to ride my bicycle to work in this.”

But alas, the Japanese workforce is unflagging, and they expect the same of their foreign visitors. Autumn has finally come to Honshu, and although Japan boasts an excellent reputation for its calm fall climate and spectacular foliage, I am finding that the most dramatic feature of the season is the typhoon weather that I woke up to early last week. The chilling gales wouldn’t be so bad if my school was heated -which it isn’t.

In fact, this is the standard practice in Japanese high schools. They think each individual should be responsible for his own heat conservation. (What happened to group mentality?) The office of my school is tolerable, maybe 67 degrees, but the doors of the school are kept open, causing the typhoon winds to whip down the corridors, bringing the hallway temperature down to around 45. I asked my co-workers if the exterior doors of the school are always kept ajar and they assured me that even in the wintertime, during blizzards, the doors remain open “for the convenience of the students who must pass through them.” I’m thinking that these kids are smart enough to be able to manipulate a doorknob, but maybe I’m overestimating my students’ aptitude.

My students see me suffering from the cold and ask if I am from a warm climate. I explain that Illinois is just as cold as Tochigi, but the people of America have a strong belief in indoor heating. This may somehow be related to our obsession with freedom, but I’m still trying to piece that one together.

The cold isn’t completely bad, though. I’m beginning to suspect it’s one of the secrets behind why Japanese women age so well. When I refrigerate my produce, it stays crisper for longer before it turns soggy. Perhaps the same is true for the feminine countenance. If so, the freezing work conditions are actually a perk of working in a public school. Additionally, our bodies burn more calories trying to stay warm, so the lack of indoor heating also helps a girl maintain a slim figure. I consider myself lucky to be receiving these ancient beauty secrets of the Orient, at no cost save the possibility of frostbite-induced amputation.

Like natto, my unheated school is something I’m beginning to warm up to (though strictly in the figurative sense). I can now begin to reap the beauty rewards Japanese women have been enjoying for centuries. Discovering the age-preserving benefits of the unheated workplace actually comes as excellent news; all this time I’ve been eating sheets of seaweed like it’s going out of fashion.