Daylight Savings

The cliché "you don't know what you have until it’s gone" doesn't readily conjure thoughts of setting the ol’ clock back, that is, until you have lived in a northern region that doesn’t. I had never really considered what summer days would be like if William Willett hadn’t come up with the genius of rolling back the clock in the spring to take advantage of the early sunlight hours. In addition, here in Hokkaido, not only are we the farthest north in Japan but we are also hanging out slightly to the east.

Now, I am sure that some of you are thinking “really, so what? How much difference can it make?”. The result is that already, in late May, in order to greet the rising sun, we have to roll out of bed at 3:45 a.m. On weekdays, when we try to “get up early” and get outside for a walk or a run in the morning before work, the sun is already high in the sky. It also means that we don’t get those lovely warm nights after work is over. Again, I can imagine that you are thinking “just shift your schedule and hour earlier and it will be fine”. Not so easy, this country is the land of the night-owls. When we leave the house at 7:30 in the morning on a week day the streets are still quiet. People like to sleep late and work late here; even the coffee shops don’t open until 9:30 or 10:00. So shifting my schedule would definitely be fighting a losing battle.

Strange to think that this is one of the things that I miss about home.... More efficient use of sunlight.