May i ask where you are from? Where i live heated floors are by now very common on new buildings and i even know of one house that has it since about 40 years. I study architecture so i'm just interested in stuff like this. i love heated floors. my parents house is too old for it though ;__;
A friend of mine who studied abroad in Japan hung big heavy blankets over her windows at night to trap the heat in, and she said it worked pretty well. She brought her own cheap space heater from America, and ran it in her room in the morning and before she went to bed, and in the bathroom for about twenty minutes before she went to take a shower.
@@YukataKaytee Yeah! I wonder if Japan has the plastic window coverings that you take a hair dryer too and it shrink wraps around the window to seal it in.
Why dont they add insulation when building their houses? i dont get that. I lived in Japan for one year and no one understood the word "insulation". :D Our house here in germany is so perfectly insulated that I rarely have to use the central heating in winter to sustain 21°C. In Japan in the other hand my olive oil was frozen one day in the kitchen (not in the fridge :D)
It's definitely the 2 things I miss about American houses when I go to Japan, central AC/heating and insulation/double pane windows... It definitely makes it hard to want to take a shower when the bathroom's all tile and the tub's stainless steel. We've got some electric and kerosene heaters to warm up the bathroom, hallways, and entry, but I usually turn that on 15-20 minutes before I take my shower.
In Germany you have winter.. The average winter temperture in the Coldest place in Japan is like -11. In Tokyo it doesn't get below 5 very often not -5.. 5C.. the RECORD low in Tokyo is -9C That is put on a sweater weather, not "surviving winter in Japan" weather. If she has Nordic friends that think it is cold in Tokyo.. ... those are made Nordic people. Then again Most Nordic Countries are actually really mild in the Winter... Ask someone from Calgary or nearly anywhere in Canada (Minus Southern Ontario and Southern BC) if Japan is cold.
indeed, the german winters are much colder BUT: when I was in japan it was almost impossible to live inside. It was horrible. Even if the minimal temperature was +10°C. The japanese houses usually dont have any insulation. It really means NOTHING XD. I could even feel the cold win, when my windows were closed.
I often use my oven to heat my house. turn it to 350, let it heat up, then crack it. goes from 40 - 65 degrees in like 20 minutes. doesnt impact my electric bill too much, maybe $5-$10/month
+Diasent Domorincon when I was a kid my mom did the same thing because the heater broke down in the middle of November in Canada, and we had no imeadiate money to fix it, it works well
Another good heating option akin to the hot water bottles but more cozy is a sock filled with rice or corn. I'm from Minnesota/North Dakota and we love them here. You don't need to use a sock alot of people make them by sewing a pouch and filling it with corn or rice. That way you can whatever size you want. The sock shape works well because you can loop it over your shoulders and neck.
I live in the NW of the US and have come to realize with each year I age, the winter gets less livable. I may never get to travel to Japan, as I want to; but this may have saved my general life. Thank you for that. I live on heating pads, but you can get some nasty heating pad burns if you do that long term.
Ptolemy That actually sounds really nice. Is it dry or humid though? That's what kills you. In the southern states, it gets so hot (probably winter Australia hot), but there is so much humidity that it feels like you're trying to breathe through a wet blanket.
i just recently came across your channel here and i would have to say i like it you talk about a lot of things i wonder about with japan and being from LA state (neighbors to texan) ive always wondered and youve answered a lot of my questions so keep up the good work and send some love my way japan is awesome, and so are your vids thank you
In Holland (and probably other countries too) you can buy a space heater that uses oil as a medium. It's more effecient and safer than a radiation heater (like the one your using). It mimics the working of a central heating device. The way it works is that there is a steel radiator filled with oil which is heated by a small electric heater. The whole radiator gets very warm (not really hot) and so the amount of warm air radiating from it is more/higher(?). And because there is no red hot glowing spiral exposed no (severe) burns and way less chance of fire. I use one to heat the music studio in my shed and I just leave it on day and night, it has a thermostat and everything.
I have one of those, I put it in my back house and it warms the whole place up, my tenants love it, although it takes much longer to warm up, but is definitely more consistent, gives a more even heat all over.
We have one of those and I love it! We roll it around to wherever it's needed most (usually the bathroom or my daughter's room). I was nervous about having any kind of heater in my daughter's room given all of the fires that space heaters start, but the radiator works beautifully and can't even burn her. And yeah, lol, the cats love it!
Kotatsu hack for your office table. 1) Measure out the sides of your table 2) Buy enough Velcro to go around your table 3) Glue Velrco to the table 4) Get blankets and adjust their size and shape to go with your office table (leave as small hole for your chair as possible) 5) Attach opposite part of your Velrco to your blankets (saw, glue,...) 6) Velcro assemble! 7) Space heater initiate! (no need to put it so close to your legs anymore) We no have no Japanese winters here but -20+ Celsius is common and it works for me. Also, is it difficult to get a wood stove i Japan? Sorry that i still live in the stereotypical image of paper wall houses...
Good idea! I am so going to do that this winter to my own table. I think even without the heater, it'd be warmer, too. Especially if you sit on another piece of fabric and let it hang down behind your calves to block the hole your chair and legs would make.
Kropikovo, that sounds almost identical to what I do! ( ^ω^ ) I got a little crafty last year and made a new blanket for the table and just cut slits in the blanket for the chairs. So when I wasn't sitting there the blanket would still hang over the chairs and keep the heat in, and when you sat down you could pull part of the warm blanket up on your lap, it was awesome! Also I live up north end of Saskatchewan, Canada so our winters regularly get as cold as -50c usually around -30 during the day so this is sooo nice to have!
Hi Grace, try this trick to get heat in the back room or any room that's cold. When you use you wall heater, put a fan on the floor in the doorway of the room you want heated and aim the fan so it's blowing out of the room and the warmer air will flow into it. I do this at my parents house that a bit older and doesn't have central heat. The fan will eventually spread the warm air everywhere. Just make sure the heat is on. Oh this also works for cooling too just turn the fan so it aims into the room.
Growing up in an old country home in the 60's and 70's. Fireplaces don't heat the house very well, we kinda huddled around them. The beds had a lot of quilts, heavy in fact. We would keep our clothes in bed with us to be put on the next day. We were lucky if the bedroom was 40 degrees or better but it was nice and cozy in the quilts.
My husband and I just use two space heaters and two electric blankets to heat our house in the winter, and we live in Massachusetts, so it gets pretty fricken cold here, too. We're actually supposed to get over two feet of snow on Monday/Tuesday. Our electric bill still stays under $100, and we don't have an actual heat bill at all, so we much prefer it this way... even if we have to bundle up sometimes. Stay warm, Grace! :)
Wow! You're so lucky! Before I moved to Tokyo, I lived in Philadelphia and my electric bill was always around $200 in the winter. It got way too cold in Philly!
TOFUsenshi We also live on the second floor of a 3-family home, and the other two floors use gas heat, so we get some of their warmth just by where we are. haha. It's 28 degrees here at the moment, but we're getting a low of 5 on Wednesday.
dxgirly Wow and I thought it was cold here in sweden and its only 37.4F or 3c. Though our apartments are really good isolated so its never cold inside.
You could make the table you have as a sort-of kotatsu with the heater that you have by putting a thicker tablecloth over the table. One that hangs down about 2/3rds or even further if you choose. I have done this for years over the table I use as a desk and it works really well, the heat gets trapped by the tablecloth just like with a kotatsu. There are two great things about this, because it traps the air you don't need to have the heater so close to your legs, and you may not have to run the heater for as long before you warm up. Before I used the tablecloth I would run my spaceheater for hours, but now I can run it for about an hour or less and go for about two or three hours before I turn it on again. My space heater that has both the regular heating filament guard and then a...not sure what to call it, a distance box? It keeps items or pets about a 18" away from the front and sides, so it keeps the tablecloth from accidentally getting too close and being a fire hazard. Mine doesn't have a remote so when I turn it on I always, always check that the tablecloth isn't caught on anything close to the heater, and that nothing like a loose sock or whatever might get to close even with the distance box . My dog loved it, she would stay under the table for hours, sleeping with her head on my foot. :)
I like the idea of draping a blanket around a table with a heater going underneath. Sounds toasty! And a lot cheaper than leaving the heater running all day.
A Patton PUH680-U space heater will keep a small apartment at 760 sqft at room temperature when the outside temp is above freezing. Freezing and below use 2 and place them at opposite sides of your place. I lived in a 1 bedroom apartment for years that was only 760sqft and 2 of those heaters kept my entire apartment toasty warm during the winter.
I love how you explain what a hot water bottle is 😄 in NZ our houses aren't central heated either so it's pretty cold even if your house is insulated well. Grew up with hotties to keep me warm in bed. Now we have an electric blanket 😍
Kerosene heater is the best to heat up the house, winter outside and summer inside. I used to use an electric blanket while watching tv at home during the winter and spent a couple of cents a day on heating.
People assume that Australia is hot all the time but many houses here do not have central air/heating/cooling so winter here can be very tough. I have lived in 6 different houses here and none of them have any heating or cooling, not even a wall unit like the one in this video! For most of this winter I wake up and see my breath. We buy small floor heaters but they're not big enough to warm the whole house :(
this video was really helpful! thank you for posting this! i will definitely go buy the heating packs, try out the heat tech clothing, and look for a layering down jacket!!
We have "yutanpo" in most european countries. We use it all the time. There is even some that are small enough to fit in your hands. But those body heat packs look amazing!
NZ has pretty badly insulated housing. We tend to use oil heaters (one for each room) they plug into a wall socket and are safe to use through the night. (Also I have some medical background and it's not good practice to sleep in a room where the air is less than 18c as it affects the laminar flow of air into your lungs. No matter how warm you keep your body with blankets etc; if the air breathed in is cold; you are vulnerable to infection.
It's unfortunate that the heater is also the cooler, as heat rises and cold falls, the hot air will mostly be moving along the ceiling. We have it the same way out in the Sonoran Desert, luckily it's not cold enough to snow.
So I'm planning on getting my Bachelor of Arts degree and then I'm looking at dragging my hubby to Japan for a year or two. I'm saving a bunch of your videos to my Japan list, that way I've got lots of source material! :D
These are some great tips, even for those not in Japan! I've heard of the clothing heating packs and space heaters before of course! And I got better at keeping warm and layering when I moved to the south and was riding my bike to work in the winter, man I could have used those heating packs... So many times. I got really good at wearing layers while not looking like I was wearing layers.
I find Japan to be very warm in winter but I have now decided to use my heater as I stay home. Investing in thick curtains also help retaining the heat I would add :)
I went from Idaho where it get seriously cold, down to central Argentina where it only gets sort of cold. Argentina was so much worse! It's a serious challenge when the house isn't insulated or heated. It took me a long time to figure out how to adapt.
It's actually been getting quite cold in Texas. In Houston, the coldest it was this winter was Below Freezing (30 degrees). And it was in the low 40s for quite a while. But the temper keeps fluctuating. Some days like today are in the 60s and then next thing you know, it's 40 degrees and raining. Does Japan have more steady weather patterns or is it constantly changing like here?
Many years ago I spent 2 weeks in an English hostel, and it too was freakishly cold, at least inside. It didn't get below 29f outside, but it was horribly cold inside. So, I can imagine what your Japanese experience is like.
Thank you for this vid! I'm from Indonesia which is a tropical country which means i never experienced winter in my life. currently i am studying abroad in japan and i don't know how to survive the winter as i heard it is really cold bc of the bad insulation.
1:12 fascinating how a little packet of heat can sustain one for the day... it's like in little house on the prairie where the pioneers put heated bricks in blankets at the foot of the sled when they went to the next town over...
We also have hot bottles and the thing that goes in the microwave in germany. Here it´s called "Wärmflasche" (warming bottle) and "Körnerkissen" (grains pillow). The second one you can craft yourself. Just sew a flat pillow out of cotton and pour it with 2/3 of rice or dried cherry cores. Now sew the opening shut so that your "pillow" is closed an heat it 600W for around 2-3min. You can use it over and over again. It helds up pretty well but if it gets wet you have to dry it fast or it will get mold. Also you can sew any shape you want. I saw pigs, owls, flowers etc.
The best tip I can give is using one (or more) layers of wool under your clothes. I don't know how common it is with Wool clothing in Japan, but in Norway where temperatures can reach below -30 degrees celsius (-22 degrees fahrenheit), we use lots of thin layers of wool to keep us warm. It's really really effective! I know that at least Kari Traa ships to Japan, and that is a great brand with high quality clothes that lasts for years (so even if it's expensive, you save on it in the long run).
Half of this I know about this life cuz when we first moved into our old house, we were renovating the whole place top to bottom while we lived in it at the same time. And this was in America! So we discovered the space heater thing, hot water bottle and other little quirks too. So what your saying is all very true and helpful.
I've heard this before from a German guy who said he's never had a winter in Germany where he was colder than his winter in Japan...and Germany gets colder. Apparently, not only do the Japanese not believe in central heating, but they also don't believe in insulating their houses. They like to say "One should experience the seasons", but personally I think that's just a poor excuse for not being on part with modern, first world climate control. I had a friend from the Himalayas who tell me about the lack of central heating there. When I asked why his family didn't have it (they were rich) he said "You don't understand....we're backwards". lol.
SepherStar I can confirm this, in Europe I've never experienced feeling cold in winter, inside the house. Like we don't waste energy so we still wear sweaters inside the house but its never uncomfortable
At our house which I think we might have the same sort of winters as Japan here in Michigan I'm not sure though, geographically the positioning is about the same. But, we have a central air system but we burn wood to heat the house and the water during the winter time and our bill is pretty low and we always have hot water.
I'm Canadian and live in the prairie. Three years ago we had a winter where we had -40c and colder for two months straight. So cold that when you breath it's like breathing glass. Last year was freakishly warm where we only had a week of minus -40 all told. So a good tip for you to stay warm. Wool socks, wear something around your neck all the time even a light scarf indoors. Also the New Zealand brand Icebreaker.
Hot water warmer. Haha.. It's old school... :) Electric blanket is quite efficient. Are you living in Hokkaido? I'll going to visit in Hokkaido in December from Southern California. Gearing up right now at REI. THANKS FOR Your video. 🇺🇸👍🏻👍🏻
How cold does it get? I live in Quebec Canada and this winter we had -45C temperatures at night and -32 during the day for a couple f days in a row for a few times this winter. Of course we are better equiped for heating the house but my bedroom is placed on the northeast corner and in Quebec it's known fact this sides of houses get really cold. Those nights my room could get as low a 5 to 10 C.
yeah in perspective 0 isn't all that cold. I think the problem lies with the fact central heating is not commun in Japan... which is weird when you think all the gadgets and new technologies people are still cold in their homes and apartments
I'm French, and Japanese students coming to my country usually claim that winter in France is freezing compared to Japan. So I'm supposed to live in the coldest country of the two. I've spent some winters in Japan, and if it's true that the temperatures are nothing compared to what I guess a Canadian winter looks like, it is also true that I was freezing there all the time. It's more a question of being able to warm up your body. I suppose that in France or Canada, thanks to good insulation, a proper heating system, etc, we are able to get our body prepared for any time we spend outside. I've come to understand that warmth helps warming up. Because when you're in Japan, in the middle of your tiny apartment, with no real heating, no insulation, and as many layers of clothes as you can, you're still cold. I was trying not to make the people I was living with spend too much money on the air conditioning, but even when this was on it would warm up a ridiculous HALF of the room and I would still be shivering...
acexkeikai I live in Quebec too and though I've never seen -45°C, it gets pretty cold too where I live. But that’s outside, inside it never gets below 18°C at floor level because I have bad circulation and even with wool socks and sheepskin slippers, I'm freezing if it gets below that so I set the thermostat in the room I'm in high enough so my toes won't freeze. I think that's the major difference between Japan and here. We have a heater equipped with a thermostat in every room. Maybe we have better insulation too. I'm pretty sure here in Quebec, houses have better insulation than countries where it doesn't really get below O°C. That's why I decided to never go in South America in winter. It seems I should never go to Japan in winter either. That's the one thing I can't live without, heat. Now I wonder if it's like that in Sapporo too. I have never seen any place where it gets as cold as 5°C inside in my life. It's very dangerous for the pipes to freeze. I guess you don't have a thermostat in your room that you can set higher. Have you checked your room heater for a crank that you can adjust? Normally, houses equipped with hot water radiators have only one thermostat but adjustable cranks in each room. You will need to lower them in the rooms that face southwest too to have a better effect though. Oh and one last thing. It's easy to throw degrees at people to show how cold/hot it is where you live but you need to know that what's really important is what the body will feel. 5°C with 90% of relative humidity will feel way colder than 5°C with 40% of relative humidity. Same with the wind chill if you are outside. And it's the same with hot weather. 30°C with 90% of relative humidity will feel suffocating and 30°C with 40% of relative humidity will feel nice and warm.
Another tip for heating up a little; if you have and use an oven, when done with it and it's cooling down. slip an oven-mitten in the oven-spring so the rest-heat is spreading through out the kitchen. (sorry if something is unclear.my english are usually pretty good but I just couldn't find the words for everything... *Swede*)
I looked it up, it's about -10'C in December as a low, didn't find wind chill, but I think that would give it extra kick. I come from Northern Ontario, Canada, so it doesn't seem so bad during the cold months to me. We use a Gas heater down stairs, and a electric heater up stairs, not super bad, power is still REALLY expensive though. Just for information though, our lows during December are about -26"C on average, in January to February you can see a low of -50'C with windchill.
Very interesting. I've known about kotatsu for a long time but was not aware of some of the smaller things. This reminded me of a thing we used to have many years ago that was a cloth bag that was full of dried corn kernels,like popcorn but they were coated so you stick in in the microwave and they get hot but won't pop. So it's like a hot bean bag that stayed hot for hours. This was actually meant for sore muscles but you could use for any time you wanted to be warm.
I can remember when I was a child waking up in Sussex and the bed actually having ice on the cover that crackled when I got out... my breath had condensed and frozen in the covers!
I really love cold and winter especially when it's snowing. There is a really big mountain here in Bursa, Turkey and I really enjoy going to ski resorts and restaurant places on the mountain in winters. We actually have most of the things you mentioned in Turkey too, we only don't have Kotatsu (I've seen heating packs here but they are not very common.). There is heating in most houses though but some are still using heating stoves especially in little towns, villages and poor neighbourhoods. I don't cold winters are much of a problem for me but it's a real pain in the butt to survive in hot summers.
uv thermal window tints/sheets. they stick to the window, with a very mild tint. what is does is stop or lessen temperate transition. Your heater is on, the heat will stay in, and the cold out. Ac on, cold stays in and hot out. I love them.
oh you guys have tatami flooring, my friend made a japanese design room in her house and i love the feeling of tatami under my feets! also its more comfy than hard wood floors if you lay down on them..
A lot of those tips are similar to what my grandma used to do when she was a kid in the great depression days. Bed warmers, layers of clothing, water bottles. The best to you guys over there. ..um.. it's like 50 degrees here in Oregon... what the heck? (stay warm!)
I have winter now, so I'm wearing ski pants, and a possum/marino top. Sometimes I hop into a sleeping bag when at the computer, and I use hot water bottles, a gas flued fire, or an oil less column heater. Doing some work in the garden also warms me up.
One thing you could try - we used to do this when I was growing up in Oregon and we were poor -- if you can find it in Japan, get thick sheets of plastic material (still somewhat see-through - I think my parents got them at a hardware store) and staple them around your windows. This helps keep the cold air from seeping through the single-pane glass.
How do you not get a sore throat from breathing cold air constantly though? That was my biggest problem last winter. Since I like it cold anyway, I let it get cold in my room and kept waking up with a sore throat...
Why do you get a sore throat from cold air? I'm Canadian and whether it's -25C or 0C it doesn't give me or anyone I know a sore throat, viruses and bacteria will cause a sore throat cold doesn't make you sick. I often shovel snow in a t-shirt when it's -10C and I'm fine I didn't die lol. We even get a "January thaw" it goes from -20C to +5C in a day and we're fine. The one thing that may cause a sore throat is in winter people tend to stay inside more, kids with colds, just close quarters more people close together one sick person can spread their germs to others easier but that could happen in any temperature with people crammed together.
Cold air cannot hold as much moisture as warmer air and your throat gets dried out and sore from breathing it so long without swallowing saliva or drinking.
David Hughes what you said applies to people generally getting sick from things like flu in winter, not to sore throats. I did spend a lot of time outside so that definitely wasn't the problem.
+David Hughes Partially correct, but being cold does reduce your resistance a little bit. But keeping ones bodyheat up through manual labour does work, as it doesn't matter much how cold the air is against your skin, if your body is nice and toasty from the inside. :) PS: Of course, really extreme temperatures do matter. If it's -25C and there is a wind blowing at more than 12 m/s, you would have to be in incredibly good shape, and eat a lot, to be able to avoid frostbite through strenous activity.
my 4SLDK holiday home in Manazuru was built in 2008 and it has central heating (underfloor heating), I only go to Japan for summer holidays so I've never used it during the winter.
I used to live in Canada for a few years until a couple years ago, my wife and I spent like $1600 on down jackets our first winter... well... we didn't "need" to spend $900 on the Canada Goose "Expedition" parka... but it was the only one we could find at first... it's the kind of parka they wear on Antarctica... Our old apartment would be somewhat cold sometimes, as the old heaters were some things near the floor in each room by the window... we found that taping the seems and every imaginably crack we could find... like... the wind seems, the... door seems.... it helped keep our apartment warmer.
have you tried electric oil heater, looks just like the normal ones from central heating on room walls, and it will heat up the entire room in one or 2 hours .. and will keep it warm. really warm
I'm from north UK, buy I'm currently living in Kagoshima (southern most city of the four islands) in a 1DLK, so I don't haven't had this problem so far. I don't think I would even needed my heater when I compare to the unheated mornings of my house back home. I'm sure I'm going to die in the summer though....
100 bucks a month is a lot. I heat my house with wood for about 30bucks a month. and the 30 bucks is for running the box fan to move the warm air around.
i think ill prefer that weather more than melting or roasting in a very hot one. the heat is really driving me crazy. I barely even walk in the streets because the heat is killing me
This is so unbelievable as Japan is vulcanic and has geothermic energy for free - just look how Iceland is doing it, they do not even need oil! I did not know that such a developped country like Japan has freezing temperatures and no isolation in their buildings.
for being so advanced i think its weird japan doesn't have central air. really makes no sense and seems impractical having to buy a bunch of things to stay warm.
+MEEKA MALCOU Yea, thats like having no running water, it's a basic thing. In Europe many places dont have the air blowing heating either, but they do have water based heaters that do the job pretty well. So what's the deal in Japan? Not enough cold days to justify building with heating systems? Or is this something that is only in you guys area but not a norm for all of Japan?
+MEEKA MALCOU Energy is very expensive in Japan. There was air conditioning in my office in Japan, but it is not as common in homes. Here, too, it was a wall-mounted system like you now find in North America. You turn it on and off as you need it. When I got to my office in winter, I first turned on the heat and then stayed in my winter coat and made some coffee until it felt more comfortable. Japan does not have its own oil, natural gas or coal reserves.
+Chanie Moo It's my understanding - from reading an article or cookbook - can't recall which - about Chinese cooking is the belief that warming the person from the inside is the way they warm up in cold weather. Perhaps this belief also is part of Japanese culture.
In north Texas at least, the winters get fairly intense, especially when you factor in wind chill. Since the wind can get like 40mph and up, it feels like the temperature drops like ten degrees. And then we have our pipes freezing and roads icing over. We used a lot of space heaters, especially in the town I'm from since all the houses are super old and don't have central heating
I grew up in a frame cabin in north Texas and we had several Gas space heaters, the Main Difference is also that Japanese Buildings rarely have insulation in the walls or ceilings.
Well, I do have heaters in my home, but they never work, so during the first winter in our apartment, the boyfriend and I ended up freezing our butts off at 59 degrees…So the number one thing we use to keep our living room (were we spend most of our day) warm is candles. We have around 6 small ones and 3 large ones burning throughout the day with a closed door, which heats up the room super nicely. when we shift to the bedroom at night we usually just put the blow dryer under the blankets for 10 minutes lol. bathroom, kitchen and hallway just stay cold, because those are the rooms we spend the least time in and we can't be bothered heating them up for half an our of usage (like cooking or showering).
A good space heater should be plenty to keep at least 1 room really warm. I have an oil radiater style heater that is very efficient, it distrubutes heat evenly and its safe enough to leave on overnight.
THANK YOU! You are a gem. I found this on my recommended videos even before I found out I'm coming here. Arrived in Spring and temperature's dropping now at night time. Freezing coz I come from a tropical country. Where did you get the heating pads in bulk? DonQui? ;)
in my old house we had a heater that was a central one but it didnt really work, so usually we just left the oven cracked and turned it up a bit and got a space heater for each individual room
I used a lot of sherpa blankets when I lived in Alaska. Sometimes I had to sleep in the truck (off, obviously, because I was too broke to waste gas for the heater), and when it's -50F or -60F outside, those things were an absolute lifesaver. Nothing quite like watching your breath freeze on the window and still having to poke your feet out of the blanket every ten minutes because it's so warm that you're overheating.
what is the temperature there in winter? I know it snows a little in Japan but not very much so it's really hard for me too fathom that it gets that cold in Japan. I live in Canada I know what real cold is.
i guess its hard to escape the cold when the indoor heating is not built in ^^; and in my old house we had a basement that was always cold as if the heater didnt blow in the basement...... long story short:.. small room with TV, tried a small space heater it only really worked if you stuck the thing in-front of u ^^;.... and the cheep thing broke in no time as all so i guess if i had to deal with that everyday it would seem colder ive also done the hole tent camping thing too and on cold mornings its really hard to get out of the warm sleeping bed
Its definitely about weather it's built for cold or not. I've grown up in Pennsylvania with a fireplace being the main source of heat, and not needing it in the autumn because the house retained the heat so well ( even the basement with its cement floors and walks being noticeably different) And then I've lived in the outerbanks of North Carolina where its definitely not as cold in the winter, but you have a constant wind either coming from the north or from the ocean in the east. The houses are built for summer tourists and they are off the ground and the pipes often freeze. Without well insulated houses it can be tough to stay warm
I have a space heater because we had one week of temps of about 34 and windchill in the 20s. And water freezes at 32 so I consider that cold. But today I went for a ride on the Harley because the weather was that beautiful and begged for a bike ride.
My bedroom isn't heated either. I love my hot water bottle! I often go to bed wearing a sweater. Lmao. How are the outside temperatures in winter in Japan? It is 0 degrees in NY right now, with windchills around -22 today. You pretty much can't walk around outside at all unless you want frostbite.
I know water heat bottles from when I was growing up in Germany. My mom used to put them on my stomach when I had a stomach ache, in addition to giving me fennel and chamomile tea.
Haha! I'm from Australia and my friends don't think I have a concept of Winter either. My partner and I moved into a new house that is up on bricks and entirely tiled and we had condensation breath too! Those personal heaters are a Godsend.
We have one of those space heaters as well xD because our central heating has the bad Habit of stopping to function when it gets really cold. like last winter it had about -20°C (outside and our heater stopped working) and I hadn't even realized it because when I start getting cold I simply lay down under more and more blankets... When my mom came home and realized it had only about 14°C In our house we had to start our stove and stuff on until we got our heater on again :D Since then we also have one of those small ones (for emergencies ;D )
Oklahoma Winters are some of the coldest according to some of my friends. Layers of ice then layers of snow then covered in more layers of ice. So the best tricks I use is space heaters are the best for heating only the rooms you need. Keep a small space heater going in the bathroom (although not at full power, but enough to make it bearable, which also keeps the pipes from freezing). As for blankets, Fleece blankets (the THICK fleece, not the micro-fleece junk) traps heat and keeps you warm ALL NIGHT. Layers of thin clothing is better than thick layers any day. And there are some people I know of that uses aluminum foil on their windows to either trap heat during the winter or keep a room cool during the summer.
i have been wondering why not just buy a small oil radiator to every room. atleast here where i live they are so cheap, you can get one under 30euros. And they keep normal size room enough warm so you can hangout on boxers.
Don't they sell heating blankets you can put on your bed and toasty all night or buy a couple oil heaters they work great all metal radiator looking with oil filled inside. Or just a regular space heater.
Living in MN, winter does get really, really cold (I remember a couple of times that the temp dropped to -40F). We have to buy our own fuel for the year (and it does suck when you run out during the winter). But going out, I will have at least 4 layers on when it gets around 10F. Thermals, tanktops and tee shirt underneath my work clothes; a polar fleece jacket then my leather and wool coat. When I am at home I have a couple of space heaters, one in my room, and one in the family room upstairs. I'm always taking my dad's sweaters cause they are baggy on me= warmth. I have a heated mattress pad on my bed as well as a mini heating pad. Otherwise I bake some stuff, or broil it to add some heat... Shoe wear of choice are my leather boots or my mucklucks I got from red wing shoes. I also have a pair designed to be slippers to wear around the house... Just remember, there is a thing out here where its too cold to snow, its some chemistry thing, and it literally warms up to snow. :)
I remember going to my grandmother's old house, (we moved) and sleeping under the kotatsu while eating mandrin oranges(because it's a tradition). It it amazing. I tend to find uniqlo's heat tech leggings not working out with me. Although I live in california, when it get's cold it get's super cold
Most of this you can take elsewhere. I live in Nebraska and it can get cold. I basically just layer blankets which helps. You were stating it's less then 100 bucks to heat the one room which wasn't bad, seems somewhat expensive to me considering we can heat our entire house for less then 100 bucks and our house is fairly big. ( our water/heat has a level payment plan so we pay the same amount through the entire year, which is nice so we know exactly what we are paying no matter how cold it is.
I think we have those heat pads here in the UK but from what I've seen they're sold almost entirely for medical use, like for muscle pain etc. So I guess you could buy them for warmth but it'll have to be from the pharmacy xD
Oh you can get hand/feet warmers in outdoorsy shops and maybe in the pound shops too :) You can get reusable ones where once you snap the metal disk for the first time you just have to put it in hot water to re warm. They're so good for when it really gets cold here in the uk :)
Can the blanket/heating unit of the kotatsu be detached? Because I'd really like one of those. Though the chance of finding one in central europe is probably rather slim ;_;
I just checked out the average temperatures in Japan and was shocked to see it's really similar to the UK! For some reason I always imagined Japan to have tropical weather.
I have friends who lived in a fairly new apartment building and it had heated floors. It was so nice in winter even with no other heating on.
May i ask where you are from? Where i live heated floors are by now very common on new buildings and i even know of one house that has it since about 40 years. I study architecture so i'm just interested in stuff like this. i love heated floors. my parents house is too old for it though ;__;
I live in Chiba. Anything under like three years is basically unheard of of having any useful heating.
Jakub Makalowski not just new but most apartments have floor heating in Japan and South Korea
A friend of mine who studied abroad in Japan hung big heavy blankets over her windows at night to trap the heat in, and she said it worked pretty well. She brought her own cheap space heater from America, and ran it in her room in the morning and before she went to bed, and in the bathroom for about twenty minutes before she went to take a shower.
Bubble wrap works too and still gets light through during the day!
@@YukataKaytee Yeah! I wonder if Japan has the plastic window coverings that you take a hair dryer too and it shrink wraps around the window to seal it in.
Why dont they add insulation when building their houses? i dont get that. I lived in Japan for one year and no one understood the word "insulation". :D Our house here in germany is so perfectly insulated that I rarely have to use the central heating in winter to sustain 21°C. In Japan in the other hand my olive oil was frozen one day in the kitchen (not in the fridge :D)
I don't know but it drives me crazy! I miss insulation...
It's definitely the 2 things I miss about American houses when I go to Japan, central AC/heating and insulation/double pane windows... It definitely makes it hard to want to take a shower when the bathroom's all tile and the tub's stainless steel. We've got some electric and kerosene heaters to warm up the bathroom, hallways, and entry, but I usually turn that on 15-20 minutes before I take my shower.
It's even worse because it also means that when you air condition in the summer, the house also heats back up faster.
In Germany you have winter.. The average winter temperture in the Coldest place in Japan is like -11. In Tokyo it doesn't get below 5 very often not -5.. 5C.. the RECORD low in Tokyo is -9C
That is put on a sweater weather, not "surviving winter in Japan" weather.
If she has Nordic friends that think it is cold in Tokyo.. ... those are made Nordic people.
Then again Most Nordic Countries are actually really mild in the Winter... Ask someone from Calgary or nearly anywhere in Canada (Minus Southern Ontario and Southern BC) if Japan is cold.
indeed, the german winters are much colder BUT: when I was in japan it was almost impossible to live inside. It was horrible. Even if the minimal temperature was +10°C. The japanese houses usually dont have any insulation. It really means NOTHING XD. I could even feel the cold win, when my windows were closed.
I often use my oven to heat my house. turn it to 350, let it heat up, then crack it. goes from 40 - 65 degrees in like 20 minutes. doesnt impact my electric bill too much, maybe $5-$10/month
Diasent Domorincon Smart idea! (Ryosuke)
+Diasent Domorincon I rly hope ur not talking bout celsius xD
The Real Meow nah Fahrenheit
Good xD
+Diasent Domorincon when I was a kid my mom did the same thing because the heater broke down in the middle of November in Canada, and we had no imeadiate money to fix it, it works well
I'll be honest, as a Michigander, and someone who loves the cold, everything you talked about sounds absolutely ideal.
+MasterCheifn343 Same here!
+MasterCheifn343 I'm from NYC and used to live in MA and NH and its sounds ideal too.
Another good heating option akin to the hot water bottles but more cozy is a sock filled with rice or corn. I'm from Minnesota/North Dakota and we love them here. You don't need to use a sock alot of people make them by sewing a pouch and filling it with corn or rice. That way you can whatever size you want. The sock shape works well because you can loop it over your shoulders and neck.
I live in the NW of the US and have come to realize with each year I age, the winter gets less livable. I may never get to travel to Japan, as I want to; but this may have saved my general life. Thank you for that.
I live on heating pads, but you can get some nasty heating pad burns if you do that long term.
+Dog Flamingo Visit Australia where Winter is Summer and Summer is Hell.
Ptolemy That actually sounds really nice. Is it dry or humid though? That's what kills you. In the southern states, it gets so hot (probably winter Australia hot), but there is so much humidity that it feels like you're trying to breathe through a wet blanket.
i just recently came across your channel here and i would have to say i like it you talk about a lot of things i wonder about with japan and being from LA state (neighbors to texan) ive always wondered and youve answered a lot of my questions so keep up the good work and send some love my way japan is awesome, and so are your vids thank you
In Holland (and probably other countries too) you can buy a space heater that uses oil as a medium. It's more effecient and safer than a radiation heater (like the one your using). It mimics the working of a central heating device. The way it works is that there is a steel radiator filled with oil which is heated by a small electric heater. The whole radiator gets very warm (not really hot) and so the amount of warm air radiating from it is more/higher(?). And because there is no red hot glowing spiral exposed no (severe) burns and way less chance of fire. I use one to heat the music studio in my shed and I just leave it on day and night, it has a thermostat and everything.
And if you have cats they like to curl up right art the base and sleep.
I have one of those, I put it in my back house and it warms the whole place up, my tenants love it, although it takes much longer to warm up, but is definitely more consistent, gives a more even heat all over.
We have one of those and I love it! We roll it around to wherever it's needed most (usually the bathroom or my daughter's room). I was nervous about having any kind of heater in my daughter's room given all of the fires that space heaters start, but the radiator works beautifully and can't even burn her. And yeah, lol, the cats love it!
Kotatsu hack for your office table.
1) Measure out the sides of your table
2) Buy enough Velcro to go around your table
3) Glue Velrco to the table
4) Get blankets and adjust their size and shape to go with your office table (leave as small hole for your chair as possible)
5) Attach opposite part of your Velrco to your blankets (saw, glue,...)
6) Velcro assemble!
7) Space heater initiate! (no need to put it so close to your legs anymore)
We no have no Japanese winters here but -20+ Celsius is common and it works for me.
Also, is it difficult to get a wood stove i Japan? Sorry that i still live in the stereotypical image of paper wall houses...
Good idea! I am so going to do that this winter to my own table.
I think even without the heater, it'd be warmer, too. Especially if you sit on another piece of fabric and let it hang down behind your calves to block the hole your chair and legs would make.
Kropikovo, that sounds almost identical to what I do! ( ^ω^ ) I got a little crafty last year and made a new blanket for the table and just cut slits in the blanket for the chairs. So when I wasn't sitting there the blanket would still hang over the chairs and keep the heat in, and when you sat down you could pull part of the warm blanket up on your lap, it was awesome!
Also I live up north end of Saskatchewan, Canada so our winters regularly get as cold as -50c usually around -30 during the day so this is sooo nice to have!
Hi Grace, try this trick to get heat in the back room or any room that's cold. When you use you wall heater, put a fan on the floor in the doorway of the room you want heated and aim the fan so it's blowing out of the room and the warmer air will flow into it. I do this at my parents house that a bit older and doesn't have central heat. The fan will eventually spread the warm air everywhere. Just make sure the heat is on. Oh this also works for cooling too just turn the fan so it aims into the room.
Growing up in an old country home in the 60's and 70's. Fireplaces don't heat the house very well, we kinda huddled around them. The beds had a lot of quilts, heavy in fact. We would keep our clothes in bed with us to be put on the next day. We were lucky if the bedroom was 40 degrees or better but it was nice and cozy in the quilts.
My boyfriend is Japanese and he introduced me to my favorite winter survival item a haramaki (Japanese belly warmer) great for at night.
starwatcher67 Ah! I forgot to include haramaki! Shoot. I love those too~
My husband and I just use two space heaters and two electric blankets to heat our house in the winter, and we live in Massachusetts, so it gets pretty fricken cold here, too. We're actually supposed to get over two feet of snow on Monday/Tuesday. Our electric bill still stays under $100, and we don't have an actual heat bill at all, so we much prefer it this way... even if we have to bundle up sometimes. Stay warm, Grace! :)
Wow! You're so lucky! Before I moved to Tokyo, I lived in Philadelphia and my electric bill was always around $200 in the winter. It got way too cold in Philly!
TOFUsenshi We also live on the second floor of a 3-family home, and the other two floors use gas heat, so we get some of their warmth just by where we are. haha. It's 28 degrees here at the moment, but we're getting a low of 5 on Wednesday.
dxgirly Wow and I thought it was cold here in sweden and its only 37.4F or 3c. Though our apartments are really good isolated so its never cold inside.
TOFUsenshi I live in Philly! It is way too cold here. I was so happy when I lived in Florida for school.
Well, at least the worst snow storm in history turned out to be a dud.... like usual! ;)
Thanks. My family and I will be in Japan this December. Your tips helped preparing for that trip.
Thanks, coming from Australia I feel I'm gonna really need to put some of these tips to use for when I go to Japan in February! DX
You could make the table you have as a sort-of kotatsu with the heater that you have by putting a thicker tablecloth over the table. One that hangs down about 2/3rds or even further if you choose. I have done this for years over the table I use as a desk and it works really well, the heat gets trapped by the tablecloth just like with a kotatsu. There are two great things about this, because it traps the air you don't need to have the heater so close to your legs, and you may not have to run the heater for as long before you warm up. Before I used the tablecloth I would run my spaceheater for hours, but now I can run it for about an hour or less and go for about two or three hours before I turn it on again.
My space heater that has both the regular heating filament guard and then a...not sure what to call it, a distance box? It keeps items or pets about a 18" away from the front and sides, so it keeps the tablecloth from accidentally getting too close and being a fire hazard. Mine doesn't have a remote so when I turn it on I always, always check that the tablecloth isn't caught on anything close to the heater, and that nothing like a loose sock or whatever might get to close even with the distance box . My dog loved it, she would stay under the table for hours, sleeping with her head on my foot. :)
I like the idea of draping a blanket around a table with a heater going underneath. Sounds toasty! And a lot cheaper than leaving the heater running all day.
A Patton PUH680-U space heater will keep a small apartment at 760 sqft at room temperature when the outside temp is above freezing. Freezing and below use 2 and place them at opposite sides of your place.
I lived in a 1 bedroom apartment for years that was only 760sqft and 2 of those heaters kept my entire apartment toasty warm during the winter.
I don't utilize a whole lot of electricity. With the the Patton heaters running I've never seen a bill bigger than $80/mth.
I love how you explain what a hot water bottle is 😄 in NZ our houses aren't central heated either so it's pretty cold even if your house is insulated well. Grew up with hotties to keep me warm in bed. Now we have an electric blanket 😍
Kerosene heater is the best to heat up the house, winter outside and summer inside. I used to use an electric blanket while watching tv at home during the winter and spent a couple of cents a day on heating.
People assume that Australia is hot all the time but many houses here do not have central air/heating/cooling so winter here can be very tough. I have lived in 6 different houses here and none of them have any heating or cooling, not even a wall unit like the one in this video! For most of this winter I wake up and see my breath. We buy small floor heaters but they're not big enough to warm the whole house :(
Hi, do you have one like this for surviving summer?
Thanks for all your very useful videos!!
I'm going to have to get some of these things for my move to the UK!
this video was really helpful! thank you for posting this! i will definitely go buy the heating packs, try out the heat tech clothing, and look for a layering down jacket!!
We have "yutanpo" in most european countries. We use it all the time. There is even some that are small enough to fit in your hands. But those body heat packs look amazing!
NZ has pretty badly insulated housing. We tend to use oil heaters (one for each room) they plug into a wall socket and are safe to use through the night. (Also I have some medical background and it's not good practice to sleep in a room where the air is less than 18c as it affects the laminar flow of air into your lungs. No matter how warm you keep your body with blankets etc; if the air breathed in is cold; you are vulnerable to infection.
You have such a wonderful channel. :)
Im from malaysia....my country dont hv 4 season...just hot weather a years.....wish can go the place got winter and feel it......
i could feel this so much..i just lock myself inside the house all day especially summer. the heat is driving me crazy
It's unfortunate that the heater is also the cooler, as heat rises and cold falls, the hot air will mostly be moving along the ceiling. We have it the same way out in the Sonoran Desert, luckily it's not cold enough to snow.
So I'm planning on getting my Bachelor of Arts degree and then I'm looking at dragging my hubby to Japan for a year or two. I'm saving a bunch of your videos to my Japan list, that way I've got lots of source material! :D
+Blazewing Firebird Sounds like a good idea! haha
These are some great tips, even for those not in Japan! I've heard of the clothing heating packs and space heaters before of course! And I got better at keeping warm and layering when I moved to the south and was riding my bike to work in the winter, man I could have used those heating packs... So many times. I got really good at wearing layers while not looking like I was wearing layers.
I find Japan to be very warm in winter but I have now decided to use my heater as I stay home. Investing in thick curtains also help retaining the heat I would add :)
Ok, I'm going to be truly honest with you. I LOVE YOUR SWEATER! It's so cute, throughout this whole video is was looking mainly at your sweater
I went from Idaho where it get seriously cold, down to central Argentina where it only gets sort of cold. Argentina was so much worse! It's a serious challenge when the house isn't insulated or heated. It took me a long time to figure out how to adapt.
It's actually been getting quite cold in Texas. In Houston, the coldest it was this winter was Below Freezing (30 degrees). And it was in the low 40s for quite a while. But the temper keeps fluctuating. Some days like today are in the 60s and then next thing you know, it's 40 degrees and raining. Does Japan have more steady weather patterns or is it constantly changing like here?
Up in Ohio, this is one of the warmers winters we've gotten.
Omg, 30 sounds SO WARM right now. 0 degrees here in NY. So.....flipping....cold.
Danielle Breitstein that's tshirt whether in Canada lol
Many years ago I spent 2 weeks in an English hostel, and it too was freakishly cold, at least inside. It didn't get below 29f outside, but it was horribly cold inside. So, I can imagine what your Japanese experience is like.
Thank you for this vid! I'm from Indonesia which is a tropical country which means i never experienced winter in my life. currently i am studying abroad in japan and i don't know how to survive the winter as i heard it is really cold bc of the bad insulation.
Very informative video, straight to the point! Thank you!
1:12 fascinating how a little packet of heat can sustain one for the day... it's like in little house on the prairie where the pioneers put heated bricks in blankets at the foot of the sled when they went to the next town over...
We also have hot bottles and the thing that goes in the microwave in germany. Here it´s called "Wärmflasche" (warming bottle) and "Körnerkissen" (grains pillow). The second one you can craft yourself. Just sew a flat pillow out of cotton and pour it with 2/3 of rice or dried cherry cores. Now sew the opening shut so that your "pillow" is closed an heat it 600W for around 2-3min. You can use it over and over again. It helds up pretty well but if it gets wet you have to dry it fast or it will get mold. Also you can sew any shape you want. I saw pigs, owls, flowers etc.
The best tip I can give is using one (or more) layers of wool under your clothes. I don't know how common it is with Wool clothing in Japan, but in Norway where temperatures can reach below -30 degrees celsius (-22 degrees fahrenheit), we use lots of thin layers of wool to keep us warm. It's really really effective!
I know that at least Kari Traa ships to Japan, and that is a great brand with high quality clothes that lasts for years (so even if it's expensive, you save on it in the long run).
Half of this I know about this life cuz when we first moved into our old house, we were renovating the whole place top to bottom while we lived in it at the same time. And this was in America! So we discovered the space heater thing, hot water bottle and other little quirks too. So what your saying is all very true and helpful.
I've heard this before from a German guy who said he's never had a winter in Germany where he was colder than his winter in Japan...and Germany gets colder. Apparently, not only do the Japanese not believe in central heating, but they also don't believe in insulating their houses. They like to say "One should experience the seasons", but personally I think that's just a poor excuse for not being on part with modern, first world climate control. I had a friend from the Himalayas who tell me about the lack of central heating there. When I asked why his family didn't have it (they were rich) he said "You don't understand....we're backwards". lol.
SepherStar I can confirm this, in Europe I've never experienced feeling cold in winter, inside the house. Like we don't waste energy so we still wear sweaters inside the house but its never uncomfortable
At our house which I think we might have the same sort of winters as Japan here in Michigan I'm not sure though, geographically the positioning is about the same. But, we have a central air system but we burn wood to heat the house and the water during the winter time and our bill is pretty low and we always have hot water.
I'm Canadian and live in the prairie. Three years ago we had a winter where we had -40c and colder for two months straight. So cold that when you breath it's like breathing glass. Last year was freakishly warm where we only had a week of minus -40 all told. So a good tip for you to stay warm. Wool socks, wear something around your neck all the time even a light scarf indoors. Also the New Zealand brand Icebreaker.
Facebook post from a friend in Yakutia: "Only -40 today; it's a good thing it hasn't turned cold yet."
As a winter surviving Canadian this is adorable! Lol teasing. I love your videos!
Hot water warmer. Haha.. It's old school... :)
Electric blanket is quite efficient. Are you living in Hokkaido? I'll going to visit in Hokkaido in December from Southern California. Gearing up right now at REI. THANKS FOR Your video. 🇺🇸👍🏻👍🏻
How cold does it get? I live in Quebec Canada and this winter we had -45C temperatures at night and -32 during the day for a couple f days in a row for a few times this winter. Of course we are better equiped for heating the house but my bedroom is placed on the northeast corner and in Quebec it's known fact this sides of houses get really cold. Those nights my room could get as low a 5 to 10 C.
acexkeikai I live in Quebec too! It's exactly what I was thinking. The coldest (on average) it gets in Tokyo is like 0°c!!! THAT IS NOTHING.
yeah in perspective 0 isn't all that cold. I think the problem lies with the fact central heating is not commun in Japan... which is weird when you think all the gadgets and new technologies people are still cold in their homes and apartments
I think its more of a energy thing. It'd rather be cold and have to buy gadgets to keep me warm then pay 300$ a month for heating
I'm French, and Japanese students coming to my country usually claim that winter in France is freezing compared to Japan. So I'm supposed to live in the coldest country of the two. I've spent some winters in Japan, and if it's true that the temperatures are nothing compared to what I guess a Canadian winter looks like, it is also true that I was freezing there all the time. It's more a question of being able to warm up your body. I suppose that in France or Canada, thanks to good insulation, a proper heating system, etc, we are able to get our body prepared for any time we spend outside. I've come to understand that warmth helps warming up. Because when you're in Japan, in the middle of your tiny apartment, with no real heating, no insulation, and as many layers of clothes as you can, you're still cold. I was trying not to make the people I was living with spend too much money on the air conditioning, but even when this was on it would warm up a ridiculous HALF of the room and I would still be shivering...
acexkeikai
I live in Quebec too and though I've never seen -45°C, it gets pretty cold too where I live. But that’s outside, inside it never gets below 18°C at floor level because I have bad circulation and even with wool socks and sheepskin slippers, I'm freezing if it gets below that so I set the thermostat in the room I'm in high enough so my toes won't freeze.
I think that's the major difference between Japan and here. We have a heater equipped with a thermostat in every room. Maybe we have better insulation too. I'm pretty sure here in Quebec, houses have better insulation than countries where it doesn't really get below O°C. That's why I decided to never go in South America in winter. It seems I should never go to Japan in winter either. That's the one thing I can't live without, heat. Now I wonder if it's like that in Sapporo too.
I have never seen any place where it gets as cold as 5°C inside in my life. It's very dangerous for the pipes to freeze. I guess you don't have a thermostat in your room that you can set higher. Have you checked your room heater for a crank that you can adjust? Normally, houses equipped with hot water radiators have only one thermostat but adjustable cranks in each room. You will need to lower them in the rooms that face southwest too to have a better effect though.
Oh and one last thing. It's easy to throw degrees at people to show how cold/hot it is where you live but you need to know that what's really important is what the body will feel. 5°C with 90% of relative humidity will feel way colder than 5°C with 40% of relative humidity. Same with the wind chill if you are outside. And it's the same with hot weather. 30°C with 90% of relative humidity will feel suffocating and 30°C with 40% of relative humidity will feel nice and warm.
Another tip for heating up a little; if you have and use an oven, when done with it and it's cooling down. slip an oven-mitten in the oven-spring so the rest-heat is spreading through out the kitchen. (sorry if something is unclear.my english are usually pretty good but I just couldn't find the words for everything... *Swede*)
I looked it up, it's about -10'C in December as a low, didn't find wind chill, but I think that would give it extra kick. I come from Northern Ontario, Canada, so it doesn't seem so bad during the cold months to me.
We use a Gas heater down stairs, and a electric heater up stairs, not super bad, power is still REALLY expensive though.
Just for information though, our lows during December are about -26"C on average, in January to February you can see a low of -50'C with windchill.
Very interesting. I've known about kotatsu for a long time but was not aware of some of the smaller things. This reminded me of a thing we used to have many years ago that was a cloth bag that was full of dried corn kernels,like popcorn but they were coated so you stick in in the microwave and they get hot but won't pop. So it's like a hot bean bag that stayed hot for hours. This was actually meant for sore muscles but you could use for any time you wanted to be warm.
I can remember when I was a child waking up in Sussex and the bed actually having ice on the cover that crackled when I got out... my breath had condensed and frozen in the covers!
I really love cold and winter especially when it's snowing. There is a really big mountain here in Bursa, Turkey and I really enjoy going to ski resorts and restaurant places on the mountain in winters. We actually have most of the things you mentioned in Turkey too, we only don't have Kotatsu (I've seen heating packs here but they are not very common.). There is heating in most houses though but some are still using heating stoves especially in little towns, villages and poor neighbourhoods. I don't cold winters are much of a problem for me but it's a real pain in the butt to survive in hot summers.
uv thermal window tints/sheets. they stick to the window, with a very mild tint. what is does is stop or lessen temperate transition. Your heater is on, the heat will stay in, and the cold out. Ac on, cold stays in and hot out. I love them.
oh you guys have tatami flooring, my friend made a japanese design room in her house and i love the feeling of tatami under my feets! also its more comfy than hard wood floors if you lay down on them..
With how tiny your apt is, all you need is a couple of nice space heaters. You can just unlpug them and move them room to room.
A lot of those tips are similar to what my grandma used to do when she was a kid in the great depression days. Bed warmers, layers of clothing, water bottles. The best to you guys over there. ..um.. it's like 50 degrees here in Oregon... what the heck? (stay warm!)
I have winter now, so I'm wearing ski pants, and a possum/marino top.
Sometimes I hop into a sleeping bag when at the computer, and I use hot water bottles, a gas flued fire, or an oil less column heater.
Doing some work in the garden also warms me up.
One thing you could try - we used to do this when I was growing up in Oregon and we were poor -- if you can find it in Japan, get thick sheets of plastic material (still somewhat see-through - I think my parents got them at a hardware store) and staple them around your windows. This helps keep the cold air from seeping through the single-pane glass.
How do you not get a sore throat from breathing cold air constantly though? That was my biggest problem last winter. Since I like it cold anyway, I let it get cold in my room and kept waking up with a sore throat...
Maybe sleep with a mask on? My boyfriend got sick and he would sleep with a mask on.
Why do you get a sore throat from cold air? I'm Canadian and whether it's -25C or 0C it doesn't give me or anyone I know a sore throat, viruses and bacteria will cause a sore throat cold doesn't make you sick. I often shovel snow in a t-shirt when it's -10C and I'm fine I didn't die lol. We even get a "January thaw" it goes from -20C to +5C in a day and we're fine. The one thing that may cause a sore throat is in winter people tend to stay inside more, kids with colds, just close quarters more people close together one sick person can spread their germs to others easier but that could happen in any temperature with people crammed together.
Cold air cannot hold as much moisture as warmer air and your throat gets dried out and sore from breathing it so long without swallowing saliva or drinking.
David Hughes
what you said applies to people generally getting sick from things like flu in winter, not to sore throats. I did spend a lot of time outside so that definitely wasn't the problem.
+David Hughes
Partially correct, but being cold does reduce your resistance a little bit. But keeping ones bodyheat up through manual labour does work, as it doesn't matter much how cold the air is against your skin, if your body is nice and toasty from the inside. :)
PS: Of course, really extreme temperatures do matter. If it's -25C and there is a wind blowing at more than 12 m/s, you would have to be in incredibly good shape, and eat a lot, to be able to avoid frostbite through strenous activity.
my 4SLDK holiday home in Manazuru was built in 2008 and it has central heating (underfloor heating), I only go to Japan for summer holidays so I've never used it during the winter.
I used to live in Canada for a few years until a couple years ago, my wife and I spent like $1600 on down jackets our first winter... well... we didn't "need" to spend $900 on the Canada Goose "Expedition" parka... but it was the only one we could find at first... it's the kind of parka they wear on Antarctica... Our old apartment would be somewhat cold sometimes, as the old heaters were some things near the floor in each room by the window... we found that taping the seems and every imaginably crack we could find... like... the wind seems, the... door seems.... it helped keep our apartment warmer.
Where are you from originally? Your name is Swedish, isn't it? It can get very cold in Scandanavia!
have you tried electric oil heater, looks just like the normal ones from central heating on room walls, and it will heat up the entire room in one or 2 hours .. and will keep it warm. really warm
I'm from north UK, buy I'm currently living in Kagoshima (southern most city of the four islands) in a 1DLK, so I don't haven't had this problem so far. I don't think I would even needed my heater when I compare to the unheated mornings of my house back home. I'm sure I'm going to die in the summer though....
100 bucks a month is a lot. I heat my house with wood for about 30bucks a month. and the 30 bucks is for running the box fan to move the warm air around.
i think ill prefer that weather more than melting or roasting in a very hot one. the heat is really driving me crazy. I barely even walk in the streets because the heat is killing me
"Which is kind of romantic I guess" hahah
"which is kind of romantic I guess." [rolls eyes] lol! You are too funny!
This is so unbelievable as Japan is vulcanic and has geothermic energy for free - just look how Iceland is doing it, they do not even need oil! I did not know that such a developped country like Japan has freezing temperatures and no isolation in their buildings.
for being so advanced i think its weird japan doesn't have central air. really makes no sense and seems impractical having to buy a bunch of things to stay warm.
+MEEKA MALCOU I know I thought Japan would have central air..But I guess I assumed wrong.
+MEEKA MALCOU Yea, thats like having no running water, it's a basic thing. In Europe many places dont have the air blowing heating either, but they do have water based heaters that do the job pretty well. So what's the deal in Japan? Not enough cold days to justify building with heating systems? Or is this something that is only in you guys area but not a norm for all of Japan?
+MEEKA MALCOU Energy is very expensive in Japan. There was air conditioning in my office in Japan, but it is not as common in homes. Here, too, it was a wall-mounted system like you now find in North America. You turn it on and off as you need it. When I got to my office in winter, I first turned on the heat and then stayed in my winter coat and made some coffee until it felt more comfortable. Japan does not have its own oil, natural gas or coal reserves.
+Chanie Moo It's my understanding - from reading an article or cookbook - can't recall which - about Chinese cooking is the belief that warming the person from the inside is the way they warm up in cold weather. Perhaps this belief also is part of Japanese culture.
Hey Its Meeka Knowing they have winters you'd think they would have heaters all around
In north Texas at least, the winters get fairly intense, especially when you factor in wind chill. Since the wind can get like 40mph and up, it feels like the temperature drops like ten degrees. And then we have our pipes freezing and roads icing over. We used a lot of space heaters, especially in the town I'm from since all the houses are super old and don't have central heating
I grew up in a frame cabin in north Texas and we had several Gas space heaters, the Main Difference is also that Japanese Buildings rarely have insulation in the walls or ceilings.
Well, I do have heaters in my home, but they never work, so during the first winter in our apartment, the boyfriend and I ended up freezing our butts off at 59 degrees…So the number one thing we use to keep our living room (were we spend most of our day) warm is candles. We have around 6 small ones and 3 large ones burning throughout the day with a closed door, which heats up the room super nicely. when we shift to the bedroom at night we usually just put the blow dryer under the blankets for 10 minutes lol. bathroom, kitchen and hallway just stay cold, because those are the rooms we spend the least time in and we can't be bothered heating them up for half an our of usage (like cooking or showering).
A good space heater should be plenty to keep at least 1 room really warm. I have an oil radiater style heater that is very efficient, it distrubutes heat evenly and its safe enough to leave on overnight.
THANK YOU! You are a gem. I found this on my recommended videos even before I found out I'm coming here. Arrived in Spring and temperature's dropping now at night time. Freezing coz I come from a tropical country. Where did you get the heating pads in bulk? DonQui? ;)
in my old house we had a heater that was a central one but it didnt really work, so usually we just left the oven cracked and turned it up a bit and got a space heater for each individual room
would it be too hot in the summer if you insulate the house? I live in Canada, and stone walls and insulation inside walls is the norm.
I've heard the Dyson bladeless fans can do cooling and heating, so they might be worth checking out (although expensive)
I used a lot of sherpa blankets when I lived in Alaska. Sometimes I had to sleep in the truck (off, obviously, because I was too broke to waste gas for the heater), and when it's -50F or -60F outside, those things were an absolute lifesaver. Nothing quite like watching your breath freeze on the window and still having to poke your feet out of the blanket every ten minutes because it's so warm that you're overheating.
There's also nothing quite like having to scrape ice off the INside of your windshield, but that's a given.
what is the temperature there in winter?
I know it snows a little in Japan but not very much so it's really hard for me too fathom that it gets that cold in Japan.
I live in Canada I know what real cold is.
i guess its hard to escape the cold when the indoor heating is not built in ^^;
and in my old house we had a basement that was always cold as if the heater didnt blow in the basement......
long story short:.. small room with TV, tried a small space heater it only really worked if you stuck the thing in-front of u ^^;.... and the cheep thing broke in no time as all
so i guess if i had to deal with that everyday it would seem colder
ive also done the hole tent camping thing too and on cold mornings its really hard to get out of the warm sleeping bed
Its definitely about weather it's built for cold or not. I've grown up in Pennsylvania with a fireplace being the main source of heat, and not needing it in the autumn because the house retained the heat so well ( even the basement with its cement floors and walks being noticeably different) And then I've lived in the outerbanks of North Carolina where its definitely not as cold in the winter, but you have a constant wind either coming from the north or from the ocean in the east. The houses are built for summer tourists and they are off the ground and the pipes often freeze. Without well insulated houses it can be tough to stay warm
Dude, USA is just as cold as Canada, try going to Alaska.
I have a space heater because we had one week of temps of about 34 and windchill in the 20s. And water freezes at 32 so I consider that cold. But today I went for a ride on the Harley because the weather was that beautiful and begged for a bike ride.
My bedroom isn't heated either. I love my hot water bottle! I often go to bed wearing a sweater. Lmao. How are the outside temperatures in winter in Japan? It is 0 degrees in NY right now, with windchills around -22 today. You pretty much can't walk around outside at all unless you want frostbite.
Im going to japan in a couple of months, and this tips are really awesome
I know water heat bottles from when I was growing up in Germany. My mom used to put them on my stomach when I had a stomach ache, in addition to giving me fennel and chamomile tea.
Haha! I'm from Australia and my friends don't think I have a concept of Winter either. My partner and I moved into a new house that is up on bricks and entirely tiled and we had condensation breath too! Those personal heaters are a Godsend.
We have one of those space heaters as well xD because our central heating has the bad Habit of stopping to function when it gets really cold. like last winter it had about -20°C (outside and our heater stopped working) and I hadn't even realized it because when I start getting cold I simply lay down under more and more blankets... When my mom came home and realized it had only about 14°C In our house we had to start our stove and stuff on until we got our heater on again :D Since then we also have one of those small ones (for emergencies ;D )
I've been thinking about getting a kotasu for the Minnesota winters.
Oklahoma Winters are some of the coldest according to some of my friends. Layers of ice then layers of snow then covered in more layers of ice. So the best tricks I use is space heaters are the best for heating only the rooms you need. Keep a small space heater going in the bathroom (although not at full power, but enough to make it bearable, which also keeps the pipes from freezing). As for blankets, Fleece blankets (the THICK fleece, not the micro-fleece junk) traps heat and keeps you warm ALL NIGHT. Layers of thin clothing is better than thick layers any day. And there are some people I know of that uses aluminum foil on their windows to either trap heat during the winter or keep a room cool during the summer.
Super helpful! Thank you
i have been wondering why not just buy a small oil radiator to every room. atleast here where i live they are so cheap, you can get one under 30euros. And they keep normal size room enough warm so you can hangout on boxers.
Don't they sell heating blankets you can put on your bed and toasty all night or buy a couple oil heaters they work great all metal radiator looking with oil filled inside. Or just a regular space heater.
Living in MN, winter does get really, really cold (I remember a couple of times that the temp dropped to -40F). We have to buy our own fuel for the year (and it does suck when you run out during the winter). But going out, I will have at least 4 layers on when it gets around 10F. Thermals, tanktops and tee shirt underneath my work clothes; a polar fleece jacket then my leather and wool coat. When I am at home I have a couple of space heaters, one in my room, and one in the family room upstairs. I'm always taking my dad's sweaters cause they are baggy on me= warmth. I have a heated mattress pad on my bed as well as a mini heating pad. Otherwise I bake some stuff, or broil it to add some heat... Shoe wear of choice are my leather boots or my mucklucks I got from red wing shoes. I also have a pair designed to be slippers to wear around the house... Just remember, there is a thing out here where its too cold to snow, its some chemistry thing, and it literally warms up to snow. :)
Same here in Wisconsin.
Same here in Northern Illinois.
Never found it too cold in Tokyo. Though I lived in a town called Tottori. Those winter mornings waking up without heating/insulation!
I remember going to my grandmother's old house, (we moved) and sleeping under the kotatsu while eating mandrin oranges(because it's a tradition). It it amazing. I tend to find uniqlo's heat tech leggings not working out with me. Although I live in california, when it get's cold it get's super cold
Most of this you can take elsewhere. I live in Nebraska and it can get cold. I basically just layer blankets which helps. You were stating it's less then 100 bucks to heat the one room which wasn't bad, seems somewhat expensive to me considering we can heat our entire house for less then 100 bucks and our house is fairly big. ( our water/heat has a level payment plan so we pay the same amount through the entire year, which is nice so we know exactly what we are paying no matter how cold it is.
I think we have those heat pads here in the UK but from what I've seen they're sold almost entirely for medical use, like for muscle pain etc. So I guess you could buy them for warmth but it'll have to be from the pharmacy xD
Oh you can get hand/feet warmers in outdoorsy shops and maybe in the pound shops too :) You can get reusable ones where once you snap the metal disk for the first time you just have to put it in hot water to re warm. They're so good for when it really gets cold here in the uk :)
Looking at you wear so many layers I'm already feeling the heat... Here in Singapore it's 24-32 degrees celsius all year round...
Can the blanket/heating unit of the kotatsu be detached? Because I'd really like one of those. Though the chance of finding one in central europe is probably rather slim ;_;
Daemon Most of the designs I have found either the blanket is a skirting that snaps to the table or the top pops out so you can remove the blanket.
I just checked out the average temperatures in Japan and was shocked to see it's really similar to the UK! For some reason I always imagined Japan to have tropical weather.