00:00 John Daub: Hello everybody, thanks again for watching this live stream. I don't know if I'm continuing the live stream that I had before or if I'm even on live right now. But the YouTube app crashed three times. All the applications are closed. I don't know what's wrong with it. Okay YouTube, you have to fix the app, but we're going to move on with it because we're positive people.

00:22 John Daub: So where I was before was introducing to you the Japanese kotatsu (low table with heater). This table has saved my life. Not really, I'm just saying that to exaggerate and make you more interested in this, but it didn't really save my life. What it does is it keeps you warm. Because Japanese houses don't have central heating. There's no vents, there's no central place where heat is created to warm the entire house.

00:46 John Daub: There is, up here if you can see, in my apartment, go up. You see that on the ceiling? Right there? Behind that massively tall plant that just won't stop growing? That there is the Japanese air conditioner or heater and it has a remote control that I can push to control the heat or the coldness. And this room stays cool in the summer and hot in the winter and the rest of the house is like a furnace in the summer and a refrigerator in the winter. There's no other way around it and I could put more heaters and devices but the houses in Japan are not very well insulated. You can see there's a sliding glass door this is like in most rooms that lead to a balcony and just you can feel the air coming in.

01:41 John Daub: There's no way in Japan you're basically it's sort of understood you're cold in the winter you're hot in the summer and spring and fall you're pretty comfortable dress warm in the winter and just down in the summer and this is sort of an understood thing in Japan we have four seasons here old Japanese houses the air is always coming through there. And it was this the kotatsu I think that kept people alive I'm just saying I don't think people died because they didn't have a kotatsu but I'm saying that this blanket here bottles in the heat so I'm turning it on and what that just did by flipping that switch it turns on the heater and there's also a little fan in there that'll blow the heat down so it pushes the heater towards the feet.

03:01 John Daub: Body is underneath the blanket and this is what it looks like. Half my body is really, really warm and half of my body is normal. It's taking in the elements of the room temperature, which is usually a little bit colder than normal, but the bottom is hot and feels so good. And if you're sitting here drinking a cup of coffee and eating a mikan (mandarin orange), you pretty much have the Japanese life in a glass. Once again, most people would probably opt for green tea. Me, I'm good. I am very good with coffee and a mikan. If you have any questions, by all means, hit me up on the chat right now and I will answer all your questions about kotatsu and life in Japan in the winter. Once again, be prepared to be cold in the winter and hot in the summer in most Japanese houses. It's just sort of the way it is.

04:30 John Daub: Green tea is the norm in Japanese houses, but I've got a really good coffee maker. It keeps the coffee hot for like, I don't know, like 3 hours so you could stay properly caffeinated and yet have hot coffee because this thermos thing keeps it hot for a long time.

05:02 John Daub: Are there kotatsu stores? This is a really good question. There's no kotatsu stores, but what I will tell you is, you can go online. I got this kotatsu from a shop called Nitori. Before there was Ikea, before there was Amazon.com, Amazon.co.jp, there was a website, a magazine like Sears in the United States called Nitori. And Nitori is still around, and this kotatsu comes from Nitori. Let me see if I can still find the same one. Nitori.co.jp. You'd be able to get these magazines that were this thick in all of the shops. And you would just pick what you wanted to and order it just like you would at Sears. Check it off and send it in, and then they would send you the goods. And this is where this kotatsu came from. Yeah, Nitori is still alive and well. Very interesting.

06:28 John Daub: And if I put in kotatsu, let's see what we get here. There's a kanji for kotatsu too. Not many people in Tokyo have a kotatsu. A lot of people just choose not to because they don't want to be in the middle of the street. Because it's something else that you need in your house. Japanese houses are pretty warm. This is my balcony behind you, and you can see I got a lot of sunlight here. This apartment gets warm during the daytime hours, and there's no real reason to have a kotatsu. If you close those doors and put the heater on, it's enough.

07:15 John Daub: Alright, we're back. I don't know what's going on with the YouTube app, but sorry for that. Kotatsu. Alright, let's see what we got here. Okay. So if you want to buy kotatsu, you can get it on Amazon.com. You can see sets here on my smartphone. This is the site that I used to go to. The styles are really cool. I like this one. So you can get the blanket or the futon cover that will match your apartment, which will match your look. I got the cheapest one because I literally used this thing maybe three weeks out of the year, and it sits in that closet if I'm not using it. But this one is very nice. The prices are about yeah, like about $100. Everything is about $100. These are just for the... You can get different coverings. These look luxurious. Look at that. You see that one? Nice blue. And this is really thin. I don't need anything more than that.

08:24 John Daub: Would it... Oh, it's gotten so warm. Alright, let's go underneath here. Let's see if we can see the heater in action. Alright. You know who likes to go underneath here? Cats and dogs. Don't know why. So this is... The heater is on. Do you see it? There is a little fan in there blowing the heat. Alright, the heater is going off. So it goes on and off intermittently. It's basically like an oven. A toaster oven for your legs. Except there's a fan in there and it doesn't get that hot. But you can see that the heater is off now. But it was on when I brought you down underneath here. It's not... It won't burn you. It's just warm. And I can feel the air being blown down. That's what makes the kotatsu like super special.

09:36 John Daub: And usually you can have up to four people... Four people's legs underneath here. But the thing with that is that you can get a traffic jam of legs. That means there's like four... People are trying to position themselves. Usually there's one really polite old lady who will kneel in seiza (kneeling) style and not put her legs completely underneath there. So that the three lazy guys can fight it out underneath. She's usually the smart one. Oh, there... The heater turned on. You see it up here? This is the red toaster oven looking heater.

10:14 John Daub: Hello, we're live again. I don't know what's going on with the YouTube app, but I do apologize for all of the dead streams. It's not a very good thing to have the streams go like this back and forth. So I apologize for that. I don't think it's the battery. I think it's just the app not working well. It happens. I don't want that to be what the stream is about. No. What the stream is about is this tatami room. And the last thing I want to show you very quickly is the tatami. Once again, I... Not many rooms anymore are made with tatami in Japan, believe it or not. Because it's just too hard to take care of tatami. It's too hard to maintain it. And you can't have a lot of... People don't really take advantage of it the way that they used to.

11:13 John Daub: The way that Japanese people live after post-World War II has changed significantly. There's bathtubs in the houses, for example. There's more electronic appliances. People are starting to prefer beds over futons. A lot of my friends, Japanese friends, they're surprised when I have a futon. They're surprised when I live with a futon and they have a bed in their apartment. And I can't understand why people in Japan want a bed when you can have a futon that folds and puts away. And you can have an entire room because space in Tokyo, especially, is at a premium. There's no cheap apartments in Tokyo. Really. And if you find one, it's probably... There's a reason why it's so cheap.

12:01 John Daub: My rent here... I've been living in the same apartment for 13 years. This is the 13th year. And my rent is a little bit under $1,000. Or 108,000 yen. Which is a little high for one person. For a normal one person. But I'm from the United States. Where I like a lot of space. I'll be honest with you. A potted plant can't grow that big. If it's freer, it grows a lot bigger. That's how I justify paying a little bit more for my rent. And that's pretty average for Tokyo. $1,000 a month. I live about 30 minutes from Ginza. About 30 minutes from Shinjuku. So the area is very nice.

12:48 John Daub: I like this area because after you've gotten over the oh, I'm in Tokyo phase of your life. You don't want to live in the center center anymore. Because it's just too busy. You have people all over the place. There's always problems. There's always construction. It can get really, really loud. And what I like about this area is that there's four supermarkets around my house. I live 30 seconds from the station. There's a river nearby. So I can go running along the river. And I can enjoy my life a lot more here than I would in the center. Having the convenience of everything so close to me. And that is the reason why I chose this apartment over living in, let's say, Shibuya. For living, you want to live. And you can't live in the center of the city as well. I like to run. I like to cook. I like to eat well.

13:40 John Daub: Alright. So we're back. I'm just going to end you with that. I live here in this apartment because I like the space. I like the location. And in Tokyo, space is a premium. You don't want a bed. You want a futon, which is something you can put away. I do apologize because we're wrapping up the instability of the app and this iPhone 7 Plus. I don't think they're working together. I don't think it's YouTube's fault. I think it's just problems with the iPhone 7 Plus working with the app. It happens.

14:12 John Daub: That's my kotatsu. That's a kotatsu life. This is the way that we live in Tokyo. And I would replace my kotatsu for this chair. I never sit in this chair. I sit here because it's just way too much cooler, better, more Japanese. Let's face it. And if you're living on a tatami mat, you're going to want one of these in your apartment. If you're living in the United States and you watch this and you're saying, I want one too, you probably can find it on Amazon.com because you can find just about anything on Amazon.com. And my friends at Amazon are going to love that. But you can also order these in Japan and have them sent to places around the world. They do send it. The shipping is a little bit more expensive. Or what you do is, you know, you buy one and then you come to Japan, you buy one, take it back with you or send it to yourself. A lot of people do that.

15:07 John Daub: The app is really going in and out. I'm ending the live stream. Thank you very much for watching, everybody. I'm going to turn the last 20 seconds towards this kotatsu. I appreciate you hanging in there despite the outages. Live streams usually go really, really smooth. And today, maybe because we need Peter von Gomm on here or something. See ya.