Back in Japan: Saving electricity

It will be the word of this summer in Japan - setsuden, saving electricity.

After a few nuclear power plants took a rather long vacation and decided to stay shut down after the big earthquake in the Tohoku region in Japan, one thing that the Japanese always felt they have a never ending supply of is endangered: comfort, made by electricity.

Can live be too comfortable?

Imagine a shrine on a small hill to which Japanese have made pilgrimages to or went there for sightseeing since centuries. Of course it's a bit hard to climb the hill - you will have to shed some sweat in exchange for being able to see the shrine. Or, because you live in this decade, just take the escalator that can be found in plain nature, bringing you all the way up.

Of course on the top, as everywhere else in Japan, you also will find a vending machine for drinks that is tightly fit into the space between two vending machines for drinks (one of them with the exact same drinks) - if you're lucky the whole thing will be in front of a convenient store that sells the same drinks and has open 24/7.

The newer vending machines also have a camera and are linked to weather information, so they can highlight popular drinks based on gender, age, weather,...

Of course toilet seats are run by electricity, too - they are heated, make sounds that prevent people in the next booth from hearing the sound your body is making. With the newer ones, the lid opens automatically when you enter the booth.

The skyline of Tokyo at night is beautiful because of lighted up skyscrapers and tons of illuminated advertising and everybody goes to work with a jacket, even in summer, because it's rather cool in air conditioned offices and trains.

A few years ago, Japan already invented "cool biz", a campaign to safe energy by reducing the air conditioning in the offices. In return for changing the setting for the A/C to 26°C instead of 24°C (79°F instead of 72°F), office workers are not required to wear a neck tie; which - as scientists found out - compensates the temperature difference. Other than that, there has not been any concern about electricity consumption as far as I could see.

As we all know, Japan is a group of islands. The closest neighbors are Korea, China, Russia - all of them business partners but not best friends. Needless to say that with these geographical and political conditions, there is no international power net like in Europe where Germany can shot down nuclear power plants easily; because when there's a shortage, we can just buy electricity from French nuclear power plants (which are, of course, directly on the border to Germany...).

Further, the frequency of alternating current in east and west Japan is different. Somebody here explained me the historic reasons, well I still say it's bad planning.

In the end, all this means that if a few nuclear power plants are down in east Japan, east Japan has a problem that can't be easily compensated.

Bringing the crippled power plants back online quickly is politically difficult. So Japan is saving electricity to compensate for the power plants that are down. Life here is now really hard:

When you arrive at a station, you have to walk stairs up or down to leave the platform.
It's warm in the summer. Even within buildings.
You might have to walk more than 5 minutes to be able to get a softdrink (but it's still cooled down to a bit above freezing)
To cool yourself, you have to fan yourself some air - by hand!
It is dark in the night!

The good news however is that there is hope. Toilet seats are still warm, even in the summer, and if you still want to use all your electric equipment, just go to the store and buy "eco friendly" new appliances. By this you don't only improve your consciousness because now your consumption is eco friendly so you don't have to think about it anymore - also you help the Japanese economy, so hopefully the funds for the next nuclear power plant will be available soon.

Life will soon be easy again in Japan!