They sound perfect for cold, bitter winters. Or the North Sea.
They are okay. I bought one just because of this cardboard box talking about how great they are, but personally it was a little underwhelming. Sure your legs get all toasty, but your back and shoulders are exposed. Personally I like a fireplace much better. You can quickly control the heat by getting closer or further away. Plus my sausage dog like laying on his back in front of the fireplace more than being under a table
They are okay. I bought one just because of this cardboard box talking about how great they are, but personally it was a little underwhelming. Sure your legs get all toasty, but your back and shoulders are exposed.
You're traditionally supposed to have a heavy coat on as well (as seen in ido's own works!), which covers the back and shoulders, and (like I do) use a chair/couch made for kotatsu, the back is protected by that too.
The big draw to a kotatsu is a. you get a table, and can use it all year anyway; b. Due to being the major heat source, the whole family/friends/whoever around come together and be social, and c. it's stupidly cheap per hour to run compared to any whole-room heating options. If you don't have a readily-available (cheap/free) source of fuel for a fireplace, it can't really beat the 4 yen/hour of a kotatsu.
As an aside, where did you even get a kotatsu outside of Japan? I hear that they're stupidly expensive in the US, and importing them costs and arm and a leg (and the voltage differences make it a horrible idea, unless you want to burn your house down).
Don't worry, I converted it for Freedom voltages before plugging an anime device into the US socket.
Yeah, I later realized it was more built for Japanese conditions than US conditions. I used a blanket with it, but it wasn't as nice as a fireplace or the space heater in my workshop. Still, it's a good conversation starter/coffee table with all of my weeb friends. I paid around $400 for it shipped so it wasn't too bad.
You're traditionally supposed to have a heavy coat on as well (as seen in ido's own works!), which covers the back and shoulders, and (like I do) use a chair/couch made for kotatsu, the back is protected by that too.
The big draw to a kotatsu is a. you get a table, and can use it all year anyway; b. Due to being the major heat source, the whole family/friends/whoever around come together and be social, and c. it's stupidly cheap per hour to run compared to any whole-room heating options. If you don't have a readily-available (cheap/free) source of fuel for a fireplace, it can't really beat the 4 yen/hour of a kotatsu.
As an aside, where did you even get a kotatsu outside of Japan? I hear that they're stupidly expensive in the US, and importing them costs and arm and a leg (and the voltage differences make it a horrible idea, unless you want to burn your house down).
Solution: Electric blanket. It's not weebish, it works better, and it's less expensive. (Slightly more likely to catch fire if you forget about it, though.)
You're traditionally supposed to have a heavy coat on as well (as seen in ido's own works!), which covers the back and shoulders, and (like I do) use a chair/couch made for kotatsu, the back is protected by that too.
This to me is like the paradoxical lunacy of the entire thing, you're sitting here basically wearing like a winter coat on top, but presumably like pajama on the bottom which sort gets into like "why not just wear the coat, heavy pants, and long johns and be done with it?".
The big draw to a kotatsu is a. you get a table, and can use it all year anyway; b. Due to being the major heat source, the whole family/friends/whoever around come together and be social, and c. it's stupidly cheap per hour to run compared to any whole-room heating options. If you don't have a readily-available (cheap/free) source of fuel for a fireplace, it can't really beat the 4 yen/hour of a kotatsu.
The difference isn't as great as you might think depending on the source of the heat. In the US if you use gas (the most common source today) for heating the average bill is about 600 dollars a year. Now the US covers a pretty wide area climate wide and that's a national average so lets go with a short four month heating season(even though gas tends to predominate in areas that have longer seasons). That's 2880 hours which would work out to about 20 cents an hour which works out to around 22-23 yen. Now gas is cheap in the US yes, but even in the UK it only about doubles. The thing is this is average cost to heat a house over the winter, not a tiny section of it. Electric space heaters, a glorified version being what a kotatsu is, are fundamentally poor and inefficient ways to heat a dwelling.
Since this is a boat post it's like the difference between having a big central boiler and a huge turbine and trying to run your ship on a thousand car motors strung together.
Really if you're running the kotatsu and say two other electric space heaters elsewhere you're probably already paying about as much for much worse heating. Its why centralized heating was invented and became the standard... well the standard everyone but the insanely backward housing market of Japan. (This also assume the home owner makes no particular effort to reduce the bill compared to the average by for instance having zone heating off in areas of the house not occupied at a given time or just using a lower then average, but still vastly more comfortable temperature.)
Is freezing your ass off sometimes and dealing with silly appliances the rest of it worth saving a few hundred dollars at most over the course of a year (assuming you use NO other heat source)? I don't know maybe if you're some uber eco-warrior or one of those crazy people that only has furniture they grabbed off the side of the road on trash day in their house and eats food salvaged from dumpsters to save money.
Thing is, though, it doesn't really actually get that cold - I'm fine with just wearing regular clothes, not totally wrapped up. Gas heater usually runs about 30ish yen an hour to heat - but are pretty expensive to buy in Japan, and that whole ventilation thing means you have to have a window open.
Central heating just isn't effective in poorly-insulated houses. And remember, except for Hokkaido, most houses are made for summer (high ventilation and heat removal), not winter.
Most apartments have aircon though, so they can put that on and use a kotatsu. It's not like people don't use the other things. Everyone does when it gets proper cold; most apartments have an A/C as well, and the newer ones are quite efficient too - but if you're renting, good luck getting one put in if it's not already there.
One of the big things, as said before, is that you'll probably just get a kotatsu as a table that just happens to function as a reasonably thrifty heat source in winter - to be supplemented if it starts getting really cold. Even if the incremental cost per year can be low, the initial setup costs of getting a decent heating solution can be prohibitively expensive. People with money to burn (pun intended) certainly do run gas/electric/kerosene/central/whatever heating all the time. My total gas and electricity per month is under 6,000 yen on average (and that includes summer cooling), so the addition of the heating costs practically doubles my energy bill - 86,400 yen for a season's worth of heating (30yen/hr * 2880) is a lot more than 'a few hundred dollars'.
Really, the kotatsu is a trope, not the actuality of the situation - people can, and do, use other heat sources. It's just pleasant to also have a kotatsu. You're not sitting in a room filled with frost, huddling up to the kotatsu to protect against the winter chill. (It does depend on how hot you want it, of course). Most people I know run the a/c when it gets uncomfortably cold, otherwise the kotatsu suffices. It's supplementary warmth for nippy temperatures - not life saving warmth for the deep freeze.
(The heater in a kotatsu is a space heater usually - mine has a one-bar element behind things to stop you getting burned by it; newer ones have sensors to detect people under the kotatsu and turn it on and off, as well as auto-off if you're too close to the element).
Then again, I'm supremely unbothered by the cold, so I'm probably biased on this issue.
Tk3997 said: ... Is freezing your ass off sometimes and dealing with silly appliances the rest of it worth saving a few hundred dollars at most over the course of a year (assuming you use NO other heat source)? I don't know maybe if you're some uber eco-warrior or one of those crazy people that only has furniture they grabbed off the side of the road on trash day in their house and eats food salvaged from dumpsters to save money.
100% agree with you there. If it were not for the novelty of anime, I definitely would regret my purchase considering I have plenty of wood. That said, my sausage dog taught me a new way to use it, laying on your back or belly treating the entire table as a blanket kind of, which is nice because I can lay down to do some reading or play a game anywhere and still get nice heat as if I was right by the fireplace
Dear me!
Whatever could they be?Pot Noodle?Ahhhhhhh...Cup Noodle!Not at all!Lilibet!
Today, I have brought you some souvenirs all the way from Japan!And also...
A kotatsu!!The rumoured....!Wa...
Warspite!?
Pot Noodle
British-developed cup noodle.
The taste of Britain comes forth.