The other day I came home after basketball practice and there was no hot water. Ten o'clock at night, and the onsen was closed. So, I took a freezing shower and caught a cold the next day. After that miserable experience, here's what I learned.... For cooking, my apartment has propane, and for hot water it has kerosene (灯油) -- the big kerosene tank in the garage. To get them filled, I have to call Sato Toshinobu Shoten (佐藤寿信商店), 39.106539, 140.291390, (0184) 59-2020.

While we're on the topic of utilities, you can see from the above picture that my stove has a "fish drawer", a small oven for cooking fish. I never use it. In Japan, it is said that Western-style gas ovens were not uncommon decades ago, but now they're quite rare. Instead, we have fish drawers. And, the microwave has a heating element in the top of it, which isn't good enough for cookies but works well for frozen pizza.

It snows a lot here in Chokai, but for some reason there's no central heating. I heat my apartment with a kerosene heater. They sell kerosene at the gas station and the hardware store. In the winter, I fill a can weekly. There is an electric heater too, but maybe electricity is much more expensive than kerosene.