Watching the News on TV tonight, there were three separate cases of house fires : 4 people died in Saitama, 2 in Kagawa and another fire without casualities in Hokkaido (if I remember well).

They explained that the risk of fire was much higher in January than any other period (the graph showed it was already the "low-season" for fires).

63% of houses in Japan are built in wood, among which only 33% are fire-proof. I was very surprised when I first came across these official statistics, as I have never seen a wooden house in Europe, apart from Alpine chalets or Scandinavian log houses.