Kotatsu Culture

I'm cold.

No, this isn’t the outside temperature. Well, actually, it might be, but that’s not the problem. Unfortunately, this thermometer is on my kitchen table, and this is the temperature inside my apartment. In this land of technological advancement, where every car has GPS and a DVD player, and every child had a cellphone, none of the houses have heating or insulation. Well, some posh ones in Tokyo might, but mine sure as hell doesn’t.

There are a variety of ways to combat the Japanese winter. I know many people who stick an adhesive heating pad on their lower back, the theory being that “if your liver is warm, the rest of you will be warm”. My toes disagree. Most people (and all of my schools) run kerosene heaters indoors and have to keep a window open to prevent death-by-fumes (the most counter-productive, dangerous, and inexplicably common method).

I just stay under my coffee table.

It’s actually called a kotatsu, but it’s essentially a coffee table with a heater mounted underneath. You lift off the table top, put in a blanket, replace the top, then get under it, turn it on, and don’t get out unless you absolutely have to. I’m usually under mine within 15 minutes of coming home from work, and I wake up under it in the wee hours of the morning several times a week with a very stiff neck.

It sounds pretty odd, but it’s actually a deeply rooted part of the culture, as whole families spend days crowded around/under their kotatsu for several months. There are even certain foods that people cook and eat without having to leave the kotatsu, like nabe, a communal pot of soup that just sits in the middle of the table top, having more ingredients added when it starts to run low. In the fall, the stores are stocked with designer blankets and legless chairs to make your kotatsu-dwelling months more comfortable and fashionable. In the spring there are weight-loss programs whose entire advertising campaigns are centered around losing the weight you gained under the table.

I could pretend that I use mine because I understand and respect the cultural and economic significance that the kotatsu has in Japanese society, but I’d be lying. If my apartment wasn’t a walk-in freezer, I’m sure I could find somewhere better to be than under the coffee table.