Japan Rare
Posted in Uncategorized on 09/20/2009 11:06 am by adminJapan Rare
Seeing Japan when I first arrived, I knew the winter would be a challenge. The snow was falling and the wind was howling. I expected the bitter cold outdoors, but not indoors. Searching for central heating in residential housing, I found central heating consisted of positioning a kerosene heater in the center of the room. The kerosene heaters emitted foul fumes, causing dull headaches. Opening the window every 30 minutes and exposing myself to the biting winter would clear the fumes while the room temperature would drop. I would then be cold and my head would still still hurt. Due to the high price combined with the wretched smell, I did not buy a kerosene heater for my first apartment. Houses and apartments in Japan rarely came with heating; my little apartment was no exception.
The kotatsu was one answer. My first kotatsu had a small reddish brown plasticky square table top somewhere between two and three feet across. The table top rested on the table base with four short stubby legs that were about as high as the bottom half of my knees. The kotatsu came with a quilt that was placed between the table top and the table base, covering the sides of the kotatsu, going down to the floor, and even spreading across the floor a bit.
The light blue quilt had tiny red cars going down the road, but it did not match the reddish brown table. Still both were cheap. The quilt trapped the heat that the heat lamp radiated from under the table base. Not knowing better, I didn’t have a pad underneath the kotatsu to both trap the heat in and protect the tatami, the woven straw mat flooring in some rooms and houses in Japan.
During my first winter in Japan, I remember sitting at my kotatsu on a cushion, resting my back against the wall and keeping warm with just the kotatsu and a small electric space heater in my little one room apartment while the snow fell and the wind blew. My legs were toasty warm under the kotatsu. My upper body was warm where the space heater reached it.
When I was small, I used to build caves inside my room in the winter. I would toss an old blanket over a couple of chairs and huddle inside, imagining myself a bear in winter in my centrally heated cave. To fight the biting cold that I was imagining, I would bring in a lamp for warmth. The cave was perfect until I burned myself on the light bulb. I never burned myself under my kotatsu, but I did get uncomfortably warm. My new world in Japan was like my childhood, but without central heating.
The coal heated kotatsu dates back hundreds of years in Japan but today almost everybody uses electric kotatsu. The two kinds of kotatsu are the kotatsu I have just described and the horigotatsu, which is simply a kotatsu that goes over a hole in the floor. You sit at the horigotatsu and stick your legs into the hole. I remember going to a soba restaurant in the countryside. The restaurant, with its high ceiling and beams, looked like it was built over a hundred years ago. Each large table had its own horigotatsu. Eating there in the summer, I could only imagine how cold the giant room was in the winter as people enjoyed warmth from the waist down.
When the kotatsu was first used, hundreds of years ago, people all wore robes in Japan. The heat would enter at the bottom of the robe, go up the body, warming it, and leave the robe at the neck, heating the entire body. I spent the winter in Western clothes so my entire body did not get heated.
If you still don’t have a clear image of what a kotatsu is, google and you can find pictures. Surf over to Ask Metafilter and you can even find instructions for how to build one. Kotatsu are marvelous, but winter in Japan is a cold and uncomfortable business. Due to the very high electric prices, insufficient insulation, and building codes and laws not requiring heating, people turn to devices like the kotatsu. My friend Reiko has a kotatsu, a heated blanket, and a heated pad that she places under her feet at her desk. These are just a few of the many devices in Japan that people use to fight the cold.
About the Author:
Aaron Language Services is on the web at http://www.aaronlanguage.com
We provide Japanese to English translation, English proofreading, and online English coaching to a primarily Japanese client base.
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – The Kotatsu: Warm Furniture in Japan
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