像大多数音乐家一样，西海岸五弦班卓琴大师比尔·埃文斯（Bill Evans）的日程安排有很多表演之旅，包括偶尔的旅行。其中一项活动将他带到了日本的科比，他亲身经历了日本非常容易接受的蓝草粉丝和典型日本住宅的冬季寒意。

账单，当我住在湾区时，他是我长期苦难的班卓琴老师，他告诉我，演出后回到主人家后，他决定写一首受到访问科比的启发的歌曲。但是，他补充说，他的音乐创作是通过一种绝对非音乐的设备极大地促进的，这是一个在房屋中的一块地板上的斑点加热小工具，就像日本的许多房屋一样，它缺乏中央HVAC系统。

比尔在一封电子邮件中解释说：“房子很冷……我的主人指示我坐在客厅地板中间的地毯上。”“这些加热的地毯可以使您很快使您非常温暖。我把班卓琴拉出来，坐在地毯上，完成了曲调。”

这首歌结果很好（click here为了听），当他仔细考虑了可能的标题时，比尔考虑使用日本在加热地毯上使用的任何异国名称。事实证明，地毯的名称是热到地毯. Perhaps the principal reason Bill went with “Kobe Blues.”

A change of tune for Japan’s builders?

Being called on the heated carpet was a unique experience for Bill. But it is a familiar one for the Japanese, whose homebuilders, asa recent Deutsche-Welle TV video featurepoints out, offer some beautiful and ingenious designs and fixtures, but tend to favor an extremely light touch when insulating residential exteriors and a “personal device” touch when conditioning interiors. Sitting on or near heat-broadcasting appliances – toilets and carpets, blanketed tables (kotatsu) whose undersides are equipped with heating elements, and kerosene burners – is,observes Toyko-based online magazine SNOW, a widely shared experience during the winter months.

令人鼓舞的消息是，至少原则上，住房行业的某些部门似乎已经开始朝着节能建设迈进。例如，Deutsche-Welle视频重点介绍了Kanagawa的主要建筑师Miwa Mori的绿色建设倡导。莫里（Mori）的典范项目之一是为Passivhaus标准建造的日本房屋。

Too, the Japanese government recently began subsidizing the construction of well-insulated buildings, Deutsche-Welle notes in the video narrative, which also includes affirming comments by a representative of one of the leading industry groups, the Japan Federation of Housing Organizations. The representative, Takao Fujimura, tells the interviewer that “current laws are sufficient” to propel the industry toward greener construction and that “if the leading companies’ guidelines become the industry standard, we’ll improve our energy footprint even more.”

Mori is skeptical of the JFHO party line, however. The market for well-insulated housing, she says, is still too small to motivate Japan’s big prefab-construction manufacturers to invest in better-insulated shells, roofs, and foundations. “It’s too expensive for them,” she says. “They want maximum profits. It will take a law to get them to change.”