{"id":2824,"date":"2009-10-03T15:47:03","date_gmt":"2009-10-03T23:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/?p=2824"},"modified":"2018-02-02T19:37:51","modified_gmt":"2018-02-02T19:37:51","slug":"keeping-up-with-the-sakakis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2009\/10\/03\/keeping-up-with-the-sakakis\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping Up with the Sakakis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rob’s companion radio report to this post begins his series: “Rising Sun<\/a>: Why Japan is Winning the Energy Race.” Part One airs Monday on <\/em>The California Report<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Meet the Sakakis: Thirty-something mom and dad Yukiko and Hiroshi, and their three-year-old daughter, May. They\u2019re a typical Japanese family: they live in the Tokyo suburb of Musashino, they have one child (and they\u2019re stopping there<\/a>, they say), and both parents work to afford a middle-class lifestyle.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The modern-day energy-saving Japanese family<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I visited the Sakakis to get an idea of how an average Japanese family consumes energy. I left their home with a greater understanding of why Japan is a much more energy-efficient country than ours.<\/p>\n

I visited the Sakakis on a Saturday. It was 85 degrees and muggy outside; a typical early September day in Tokyo. Despite the conditions, the Sakakis weren\u2019t running their air conditioner, opting instead to open the windows and close the drapes to their two-bedroom apartment, in order to block out the sun and let a humid breeze flow through. When I asked them why the AC wasn\u2019t on, Sakaki-san went to his desk drawer and pulled out his electricity bill. The Sakakis pay 24 yen per kilowatt-hour. That\u2019s equivalent to about 30 cents in U.S. currency. That\u2019s also roughly twice as much as Californians pay for electricity<\/a>. Despite their frugal energy habits and diminutive quarters, the Sakakis pay what amounts to a little over $100 a month on electricity. They spend around the same for natural gas each month.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The typical Japanese fridge: several doors to save energy when opening it, and a compact size to accommodate the Japanese habit of shopping every few days (this is a large fridge, by Japanese standards, say the Sakakis).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Energy is expensive in Japan. The country has no domestic fossil fuel resources, so it has to import them. The government taxes its citizens heavily for energy consumption, and then uses the revenue to put Japan at the forefront of renewable energy R&D. This has made Japan a world leader in solar panel sales and it\u2019s put the country years ahead of the rest of the world in the development of other innovative energy-saving technologies like hydrogen fuel cells and batteries for electric vehicles. According to Japan expert Llewelyn Hughes<\/a> at George Washington University, Japan leads the world in green technology patents. \u201cIt\u2019s not even close,\u201d he told me in an interview to prepare me for my trip.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Like many Japanese families, the Sakakis share their bath water each evening. Their high-tech bath includes a temperature control mechanism and panels to trap the heat.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All of these technological innovations mean Japan is poised to emerge from the global recession with great economic potential. It also means that the Sakaki household has some very cool gadgets: a refrigerator with several different drawers in order to separate perishable items and save energy, a floor that heats up in the winter, and a bath that talks to them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meet the Sakakis and find out why this family in suburban Tokyo embodies the Japanese energy-saving ethic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11416,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[179,189,298,306,579],"coauthors":[],"series":[],"affiliates":[],"programs":[],"collections":[],"interests":[],"class_list":["post-2824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-power","tag-economics","tag-electricity","tag-international","tag-japan","tag-technology"],"acf":{"template_type":"standard","featured_image_type":"standard","is_audio_post":false},"yoast_head":"\nKeeping Up with the Sakakis | Climate Watch<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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