Japanese with anime voice: episode3
Hello everyone. I’m Sachi.
Lately, it has been getting colder in Japan, but around the beginning of November, it was hot even though it was autumn. I wondered how long it would last. It was so hot that I could even spend the day in short sleeves. Anyway, it was hot.
In my house, the fan is still out. Electricity is getting more expensive these days, and if you use electricity during the day, you pay more. So I try not to use too much power. I did not use an air conditioner in the summer either and spent my time only with an electric fan. If I opened the windows and did not move while sitting in front of the fan, I did not perspire, and I was able to get over the heat surprisingly well. It was during such a summer that our electric water heater broke down.
The most expensive of appliances broke. Can you believe it?
As for the cause, it’s 20 years old, so it’s age-related deterioration. As for the cause of the breakdown, it was a power outage.
Japan usually has yuudachi in July and August. Yuudachi is a heavy rainfall accompanied by thunderstorms, and we had a thunderstorm in July. That time I heard a loud sound of lightning from outside. It was so loud that I had a feeling that lightning had struck somewhere. I was working on my computer, which was charged, so the power did not go out. So I didn’t notice the blackout right away. I did notice that the fan was out of operation. If I had been using the air conditioner, I might have noticed the power outage right away. In my case, I still might not have noticed it… Anyway, I was not using other electrical appliances such as the TV, so I did not notice the blackout immediately.
After a little while, I heard the sound of a fire truck. Then the sound stopped near my house. Thinking that a fire truck was coming to the neighborhood, I checked out the window and sure enough, the fire truck was very close by. I could see a few of my neighbors had also gathered. Thinking that the firefighters had come to repair something related to the power outage, I went outside to see what was going on. After the neighbors asked me if the power was out, I asked them to explain the current situation.
My house is in an apartment complex with about 100 households. She told me that only two rows of houses on the west side of the complex were without power. Do you think that could happen? In other words, the houses to the east of my house are not without power. Only about 20 households in the complex, including ours, had power out.
This was my first experience. From what I hear, the bucket-like boxes on the poles are actually very important, and when there is a problem there, it takes longer to repair than when there is a problem with the wires. In this case, the two poles with bucket-like boxes on the west side of the housing complex were the ones that were damaged by lightning. As a result, four or five hours later, we had electricity.
That was good, but then we noticed an error on the electric water heater. That day, my partner restarted it and the error disappeared, so we were able to take a bath. The next day, the error appeared again on the electric water heater. The error was that it could not boil water. This meant that it was broken.
My partner contacted the house builder and the contractor will come to check it out, but according to them, products that are 20 years old cannot even have parts replaced. As for recent appliances, only those manufactured between 10 and 15 years can be repaired. For products older than 15 years, there is no alternative but to replace them.
So we decided to replace the electric water heater, but it took some time to get a quote from the house builder, check their inventory, and set a product replacement date. So far, so good, but the date to replace the water heater was during the Obon season. As many of you may know, Japan has a summer holiday called Obon in the middle of August. During Obon, all businesses and companies are closed for a week or so. It also coincides with Saturdays and Sundays. And before Obon, there is a lot of work for contractors. So, our water heater replacement day was after Obon.
Counting from the day it broke, we could not use the hot water shower for about a month. I’m a person who likes to take a bath even in the summer, but I was very sad because I could not take a bath and of course, could not use hot water in the shower. I now understand the importance of hot water.
But I’m glad this happened in the summer. If this had happened in the middle of winter, we would not be able to spend a month in the cold water shower without a bath. As it turns out, though, we are lucky it was in the summertime.
Still, the water heater was very expensive. We were surprised at how expensive it was.
Instead, the electric bill is lower than before because of the new appliances. I have lived in this house for seven years now, and during this time many of the appliances have broken. As I mentioned last week about the soundbar, we have spent a lot of money on appliances over the last few years. We had no choice, though.
Still, I was a little stressed about cold water showers. I would like to take a warm bath any time of the year.
