Tweet of the Week #62: Humidifier Adds Fire Instead of Moisture to the Air

Japanese dry winter air is the worst.

As soon as the humid typhoon season reaches a welcome end, the weather turns to dry air mode, sucking every drop of moisture from the atmosphere.

Cold air creeping into homes causes the indoor humidity to fall below 30 percent for most of the winter. In a matter of days, you begin to experience seasonal symptoms like dry skin, chapped lips, and a sore throat.

To combat the parched air, almost everyone in Japan uses humidifiers, called 加湿器（かしつき）. Running a humidifier along with your can heater help add moisture to the air for a more comfortable humidity level, usually between 30 and 50%.

However, humidifiers aren’t an ideal solution.

When water makes fire

On the flipside, humidifiers have a well-worn reputation as germ and bacteria incubators. Thanks to this week’s tweet pick, we can add being a fire hazard to the list of cons, too.

This Gunma-based Twitter user had quite a scare when his fire alarm woke him up in the middle of the night.

寝（ね）てたら加湿器（かしつき）燃（も）えて火災報知器（かさいほうちき）ジャンジャン鳴（な）ってて、人生（じんせい）で初（はじ）めて119（ひゃくじゅうきゅうした

火（ひ）は消火器（ しょうかき）ですぐ消（け）せたけど消防（しょうぼう）に警察（けいさつ）にガス屋（や）も来（き）て大騒動（おおそうどう）

= When I was sleeping, the fire alarm went off as the humidifier was on fire and for the first time in my life I called 119. I put the fire out immediately with the fire extinguisher*, but it turned into a big fuss with the firefighters, police and gas company all coming. 

*消化器（しょうかき） (digestive organs) should actually be 消火器.（しょうかき） See, even Japanese people make kanji mistakes!

Luckily no one was hurt. But it proves that humidifiers might not be the harmless home accessories they’re made out to be!

Review your adverbs of time

In his misfortune, our humidifier owner can consider himself lucky. Because he lives in an apartment building, he quickly found a fire extinguisher in the corridor and could immediately smother the flames before things got worse.

Adverbs of time and frequency hold quite an important place in the Japanese language since there’s basically only a present and past tense. Here’s a quick list for you to review your basics.

• いつも = always
• よく = often
• 時々（ときどき） = sometimes
• 全然（ぜんぜん） = never
• ずっと = all the time, always
• まだ = not yet, still
• しばらく= for a while
• 急（きゅう）に = suddenly
• 今（いま） = now
• ただ今（いま = right now
• その時（とき） = then
• 後（あと）で = later
• すでに = already
• 最近（さいきん） = recently
• すぐに = soon, shortly
• 今（いま）すぐに = right now

Vocabulary（

For more on learning Japanese

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA - Privacy Policy - Terms of Service