The Kotatsu: A Warm Tent Under the Table — Epoche A2
Dear Mum, You asked how I keep warm in a flat with no radiators. The answer arrived this week on a truck: a kotatsu. Buildings here mostly have no central heating at all. People warm the room they are sitting in - and, even more, the person rather than the room. The kotatsu is the extreme case. It looks like a low table with a quilt, but it comes apart into four pieces. A table frame; an electric heater fixed under it; a thick quilt laid over frame and heater; and a loose flat board on top of the quilt. That board is the real tabletop - its weight holds the quilt in place, so there is a solid surface for tea above and a tent of warm air below. I sit on a cushion with my legs inside the tent. The room itself stays cold. The thermometer on my wall said 12 degrees last night, and it did not matter: under the quilt it was summer. The heater is small - it only has to fill the tent. In spring the quilt goes into the cupboard and the frame with its board becomes a plain table. My landlady says her grandmother's kotatsu had a charcoal pit in the floor instead of a plug. It is ten o'clock now and my legs have been in there since dinner. Love, Emma