Deja Vu...ooh.

Hello All...

January in Kyoto and all is chilly.  January in Japan--and in Kyoto in particular-- is all about the cold, or managing the cold, or dealing with the cold or escaping the cold.

January is all about layered clothes, kotatsu (heated) tables and dithering between whether a gas heater or kerosene heater is better.

January is about hot drinks and nabe stews and enjoying the particular (and rather perverse) pleasure  of feeling  heat radiating up through your body, derriere first, through the heated subway seats.

The stores are bulging with winter jackets and thick scarves, gloves of all styles, weavings and colors and fuzzy fuzzy hats.  Vending machines sell piping hot canned coffees, teas, cocoas and soups.

Everyone walks around slightly compacted and hunched, trying to crawl into their coats like turtles.

 January means leaving 80-90% of your  (uninsulated) house vacant and unused as you cluster in single rooms wherever heaters might be blowing out their stuffy warm goodness.

And this year, January means that we get to welcome some  friends to Japan for the first time as they pack up and leave  their Southern California warmth for the chilly beauties of a Japan winter.

We've been exchanging messages and emails with them for awhile now, picking through our brains for the most helpful, least overwhelming advice we could give them.

Our deja vu is strong.

Yet we realize that so much of  living in a foreign country can't be advised.  It can't be explained in lists or discussed into clarity over dinner.  No matter how much we want to make it all easy, we can't.

It has to be discovered, first hand.

Blisses and struggles and all.

This is what makes it an adventure.

And so for our friends, who in a few days will be soaring over the Pacific, we wish them a safe journey and all the delightful adventures imaginable as they begin their lives in Japan.

And if things get a bit too exciting, never  fear.

We're right here.