Trying to Stay Cool at Home during Japanese Summer

The timing could not be worse: the Japanese summer started with over 35 degrees during the day time – and our air conditioner in the living room decided it doesn’t want to work anymore...

You can turn it on, but even if we set the temperature pretty low, there is only warm air coming out and this doesn’t help at all. We already tried to clean it, but it seems to be a technical issue (the air conditioner is pretty old) and we need to wait for staff now to check it – and already for this appointment we need to wait for one week because my husband needs to work during weekdays and they don't come late at night.

I still have my summer holidays from work this week and mostly spend the days at home, so I somehow need to handle the heat which is stuck inside our apartment. The temperatures are not going under 26 degrees during the night, too, so even keeping the windows open doesn’t help much.

Fans everywhere

When I am in the living room nearly all the time our fans are rotating. We have one we bought already some years ago and this is pretty nice. You have three different levels of power and it is moving around so I always have a breeze of wind coming around.

Furthermore, I also bought a small Rilakkuma desk fan on Mercari and this one is really helpful because I have some wind coming directly to my face.

Cool drinks & food

Drinking is very important during summer and I have a nice collection of cold-brew teas now. They are easy and quickly to make and I like the taste. Also, I am very happy about our ice cube case in our new fridge. It feels like paradise and it is so convenient!

We try to eat cold dishes often, too. Luckily Japanese cuisine has many things you can eat cold - I'm talking about hiyashi chuuka, cold soba, sushi and so on. For lunch I often go with a cold and refreshing salad.

Airism clothes & cool towel

At home I often wear Airism clothes from UniQlo. I have bratops and relaco pants and it is really something easy to wear at home. Furthermore I recently bought a cooling towel from Daiso. I bought it to use outdoors, but it is also nice at home and you can keep it on a light wet level to cool.

Time on the balcony

Our apartment is located like this that we only have direct sun on it for a few hours in the afternoon. Most of the day it is in the shade and when there is a light breeze outside it feels good to sit there. I got some pillows to sit down on and I enjoy working on my phone or notebook there.

Aircon in the bedroom

One more time I am grateful we have an air conditioning unit in our bedroom (we didn’t have this in our first apartment). So, we can turn on the aircon during the night so it is easy to sleep. And I sometimes spend some hours during the day working from there, when I feel it’s getting to hot – then I turn on the aircon there to cool down.

I really hope they can fix our aircon in the living room soon. But I am also glad I found some ways for me to keep alive in our warm apartment.

What are you doing to stay cool at home?