This week I’m on spring break and have been traveling in Japan. It’s been really nice to feel more like I’m in nature again in comparison to how it is back in Singapore. I’m in Osaka at the moment and have been to Tokyo and Kyoto earlier this week. Tokyo and Osaka both feel like very urban cities, but Kyoto I felt was much more built around nature itself. There were many walking paths to temples in the hills, as well as a bamboo forest and nature park nearby at Arashiyama. The city is also built around very old canals, and there are several walking paths along them.
It’s rained on and off since I’ve come here and it’s had me thinking a lot about water in general. The rains here feel quite different than the tropical rains of Singapore. Though many flowers are starting to blossom and there definitely is plenty of rain and water to keep them sustained, winter is still clearly in effect, and many trees are still bare. That is in stark contrast to Singapore, which feels constantly verdant, and with not many changes in temperature with seasons, stays that way year round.
Both here and in Singapore tap water is clean and drinkable which is quite nice and different from many other places I’ve traveled. Here, a lot of the water comes from Lake Biwa, a huge lake north of Kyoto which is known for being one of the oldest lakes in the world and having abundant biodiversity. Singapore however, gets water in a completely different way. Almost everything is imported, desalinated, or filtered after rainfall, as there are no similar huge bodies of water in the country. Importation is huge, though, with millions of dollars of water being imported from Malaysia, France, and Indonesia, among other countries.
In terms of energy there is also a bit of difference between Singapore and Japan. Japan is the fifth largest energy consuming country. Therefore, the country imports a huge amount of natural gas and coal to meet their energy needs. They are starting to move away from oil however, and are trying to move to more renewable energy sources as well, with a bit more than twenty percent of their electricity currently coming from renewable sources. In Singapore, however, one statistic claims ninety five percent of their electricity comes from natural gas imported from abroad. Though there are some shifts to solar and many experiments with other low carbon alternatives, none of them are quite as widespread at the moment.
