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Warm FeetTopics: Staying Warm If you come from a warmer climate, or the winter chill in your part of Japan isn't dramatic enough to keep your mind riveted on warming strategies, you might not know about foot warmers. They are in the same category as those little red-and-white "kairo" packets of handwarmers. But these are one-size-fits-all insoles for shoes. They're usually sold in packages of three individually wrapped pairs, for around Y300 the set. The package is white, red, and yellow (as I recall), with a picture of a smiling shoe sole. I guess that the heat comes from air hitting the contents and causing some chemical reaction. The warming mechanism starts the instant you open the _individual_ package, and lasts for many hours. (Be sure to put the orange-dotted side _down_.) Really wonderful warmth; in fact even too hot, sometimes, if your day isn't all that cold itself or you go into a warm room. It even has an effect the next day -- at least insulating somewhat, if not actually yielding noticeable warmth. But used longer, the cushioning breaks down, and you can feel the little "rocks" that are inside the paper cover. In my Metro Tokyo life I don't need these very often. But when I lived on the windy plains of Saitama, I used to carry extras in all my bags, so as never to be caught coldfooted. And it was fun, too, to slip a pack into the belongings of some homeless person temporarily absent from his "cardboard condo". I used to hope that its magical appearance would warm his heart as well as his feet on an otherwise cold and hardluck winter night. ES << VOIP | Index | Water from PET Bottles >> |