00:00 John Daub: This is my apartment. This is my tatami room. And I've never given an official tour of my apartment until now, sort of. This is the only room I'm going to show you today, but it's the most important room. I've been living in Japan for almost 20 years—20 years this year—and I can't imagine living in Japan without one of these. This here is a kotatsu (heated table). I'm going to show you how it works. I have a mikan (mandarin orange) and some coffee. We're going to be here for a little bit.

00:53 John Daub: I've moved 16 times in my life. When I moved into this apartment 13 years ago, before my job was stable, I was moving to a new apartment every three to six months. It was pretty crazy back then. Now I've settled into Tokyo, and I requested this room—I had to have a tatami room. There's just something about tatami that makes you feel like you're in Japan. A lot of apartments these days in Tokyo, especially, don't have tatami because it's hard to take care of. But for me, I need this. To me, it's alive—it's all organic, made out of straw, and you can see the nice stitching around it. These are panels you can bring up and change or flip when they get dirty, so they last about 7 to 10 years. When the rooms get heated, the smell from the tatami is really nice—it's a pleasing, pleasant smell that makes me think of Japan. I can't imagine without it.

02:10 John Daub: Now this table here, I got it when I first moved into this apartment. It cost me about 11,000 yen or $100. In Tokyo, you don't really need it that much because winters here are mild—not cold like up in Hokkaido. I'd consider it sort of like southern Virginia or North Carolina winters. It might snow once and then it melts the next day—that's your winter. So it doesn't get cold enough for people to have a kotatsu, but it's definitely something that's nice to have. So how do you set it up? Right now, it looks like an ordinary table. I'm going to show you how this kotatsu is set up.

03:03 John Daub: First, I got to remove my coffee and mikan. This is a Japanese mikan, and these things keep me alive between November and about now, February. Mikans are the symbol of winter—they're super easy to open. Check this out. That's it. Boom. You can eat this now. It's that easy to open, and that's why I love them—they smell so good, and I think they're even sweeter than oranges.

03:49 John Daub: So we have these blankets here. One of them is going to go between here and the table. I have this table semi-locked, so you can use it in the summer too—you don't have to use it just in the winter. This here is a heater—that's what makes this table extremely important. You can lock the table in place with these screws—very annoying screws. These legs also detach, and I can put this away into the closet. Some of you might be thinking, where do I sleep? I sleep in this room as well. When I'm done with my futon—a futon has no frame. In Japan, a futon is basically a flat mattress like a big dog pad with no springs—just soft. You can put a mattress underneath that has more foam, but I like it plain because the tatami is quite soft. The futon is also the down feather comforter that goes over it—the bottom part. So there's an upper and a lower, and I have some nice pillows. I put them in the closet, and when I wake up in the morning, you put it in there, and you have all this space. This is why I love the Japanese style. If you have a bed, it's there 24 hours a day. With a futon, you wake up, put it in the closet, and you got the whole room to yourself. People can come over and meditate, say their mantra, sit in the center of the room. You can do yoga—you can do whatever you want in a tatami room when it's open like this. And in Tokyo, you want the space.

07:04 John Daub: Because of the height of the kotatsu, you want to be sitting on the floor. There are different styles—don't get me wrong. This part, the top comes off like this. This one is a really cheap one made out of composition wood shaped into the top, but it's enough to last me 20 years. The top looks like real wood but it's nothing special. It's a square—you can get different shapes and sizes. Kotatsu come in all different sorts of shapes and sizes. To use this table, there are two screws, so you can screw the top to the frame and make a real table you can sit and eat dinner with in the summer. In the winter, you're going to want to use this heater.

08:10 John Daub: So this is the first blanket—I call it the base. This goes in the center, and the kotatsu goes on top of it. Next, we have this which is like a futon cover. Now you see what's happened. To complete the sandwich, we turn the top back onto the frame. And this is a kotatsu. Of course, you plug them in using one of these, and there's an on-off switch. The older ones used fire—they would put coals in there—but with electricity, it made it a lot easier. But they can get dangerous in the winter. Some automatically turn off—there's timers—but yeah.

09:44 John Daub: We've completed the kotatsu setup. It took like one minute. And that's it right there sitting in the center. This is how I live—you can put your laptop on there, edit videos, drink a cup of coffee, enjoy a mikan. Don't forget the mikan. This completes the set for me. You can drink green tea—that might be more local—but for me, I need my coffee. I need a lot of coffee.

10:22 John Daub: Now in Japan, the outlets look like this—they're different than the United States because we have a third little hole for grounding. In Japan, it's just the same but without the third prong—three's a crowd, right? So plug it in. Now this goes underneath the kotatsu table. It's like lifting up the skirt—what's under the skirt? Boom! So take a look here—this is the heating panel on a cheap one. I think there are kotatsu that have better heating mechanisms.

11:51 John Daub: I want to thank everybody for the super chats to this point—they weren't coming up on my screen until right now. Professor Dell, thank you very much. And Charles Gray, new to the channel, welcome aboard, Charles—because this series of live videos, unedited, this is happening right now. I'm still really impressed that we can live broadcast anywhere, anytime. So thank you for supporting the Only in Japan Go channel—it means a lot to me. Back to the show. This is the kotatsu heating mechanism underneath it. This thing just connects in here—it usually makes a pleasing sound, but this is a cheap one and it doesn't. Some lock in magnetically, but most are like this. And you can see it entered inside here—this is the fan part. It's padded with velvet so it's soft and prevents the metal from getting too hot, which I think is important. I've never burned myself on a kotatsu, but I can see how it could happen.

13:14 John Daub: Once it's plugged in like this, you have a dial here to control the level. You don't have to have it super hot. This is yowai (weak), and this is tsuyoi (strong). I usually have it in the middle because Tokyo is not that cold. Why risk going strong when you can go medium and get almost the same effect? There's not too many situations where you go super strong in Tokyo. Tokyo's average winter temperature is like nine degrees Celsius or 50 degrees Fahrenheit—nothing. Today is sort of a warm day. So this skirt, this cover, this blanket, this futon—what it does is it bottles in the heat. There's no central heating inside Japanese homes—there never has been. Japanese homes get well-heated, but to make it seem warm somewhere in a little room like home. [inaudible]