Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Entry 42360
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2024/11/23 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
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2006/3/21-25 [Recreation/House] UID:42360 Activity:nil
3/21    I bought 2 kotatsu heaters from eBay and mounted one on my desk and
        another one on my coffee table. Total energy cost this winter for
        me was only 30% of last year. I totally recommend using the kotatsu
        heater instead of traditional heaters.   -ichiban kotatsu-san convert
        \_ http://www.sushicam.com/Journal%20entries/001230.php this one?
        \_ Are you the flatulent Ionic Breeze guy?  Seriously man, the Home
           Shopping Network is ruining your life.  Change the damn channel!
           \_ I don't think American channels sell kotatsu. The average
              American male won't even fit a kotatsu meant for 2 Japanese
              grown-ups..
        \_ I bought a heavy coat last year. Total enegy cost this winter is
           0, just like it was last year.
           \_ My wife uses a small blanket when watching TV.  Ditto for energy
              cost.
           \_ You don't heat your house at all???
              \_ Don't be ridiculous. My computer doubles as my space heater.
                 \_ But...unless your computer is imaginary, then your
                    energy cost is very unlikely to be zero....  </pedantic>
                    \_ I'm not the same guy. Welcome to the motd.
                       \_ You guys are going to give me a panic attack.
                          \_ BOO! -!pp
              \_ I don't heat my house at all.  In fact I leave the windows
                 open all but like 3-4 days a year.  It's warm around here!
                 \_ Where do you live?
                    \_ I used to live in a house like this, in Berkeley: it
                       was a relatively small place, and it had been remodeled
                       in the 80's, so it had with modern insulation.  There
                       was a little heater in the living room, but we never
                       used it.  Now I live in an older, larger house in
                       Berkeley, and spend hundreds of dollars on heating
                       every winter. --!pp
                       \_ What's a few hundred dollars? I'm sure Bush's
                          generous tax cuts make it all worthwhile.
        \_ http://www.bizarreingredients.co.uk/japan/a/heater/heater.htm
        \_ Kotatsu looks cool.  I can be finger-screwing my sister while we're
           talking to our parents with a straight face.
                \_ Sister as in nun or nurse or sibling ?
        \_ Oh that is interesting ... that is essentially the technology
           used in the common dining halls at tea houses up in the himalaya,
           except the heater isnt electric, it is buring something.
        \_ I still prefer the Kang, a northern China stone platform bed heated
           by wood or coal.  It's like a modern day hot stone spa treatment:
           http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kang_bed-stove
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www.sushicam.com/Journal%20entries/001230.php
com 30 December 2000 The "kotatsu" is a familiar fixture in Japanese life. It is a small table with a heavy quilted cover that extends to the floor. A heavy dining surface holds the cover in place, and underneath the table sits an electric heater. Partly due to Japan's group-oriented culture and partly due to the lack of central heating in many Japanese homes (the average Japanese home has an insulation "R" value just below that of a wet paper bag) the kotatsu is often the center of domestic life during the winter months. Families huddle around the kotatsu to enjoy food, television and conversation, keeping their legs and feet warm under the cover. While the kotatsu looks like an ordinary piece of furniture nothing could be further from the truth. There is even a animation character called Kotatsuneko (translates into Kotatsu cat). The story behind this character is as follows: Kotatsuneko is a huge ghost of a cat that froze to death a long time ago after being kicked out by his abusive owners one cold winter. The spirit of the cat decided to go bad and vowed to haunt the people who refused him shelter. Because he died from cold Kotatsuneko is attracted to warmth. He also had an attachment to kotatsu's because his owners would never let him near one. Kotatsus are toasty little covered tables with a heater underneath to warm your feet. Kotatsuneko was pleasantly surprised to discover the heat that kotatsu emitted. He's a nice and silent kitty, who just sits with his paws under the table drinking tea and snacking on taiyaki (fish shaped pancakes). Being a ghost, he has incredible supernatural powers and therefore he's almost unstoppable when he becomes cross; Usually using his brute strength and mastery of sumo wrestling moves to push his weight around. Amusing yes, but It also illustrates just how prevalent the kotatsu is in Japanese life. This is a brief synopsis of an average night at my house since discovering the joys of the kotatsu: Get home from work, go for a jog, shower, eat, and slip under the kotatsu. I finally know why the Japanese have created remote controls for things even though the rooms are rarely more than eight or ten feet wide. Once you are under it, you start to feel a certain warm lethargy begin to creep over you. Suddenly you start asking yourself ridiculous questions like, "Do I really need to go to the bathroom that bad?" or "Why don't they invent an integrated toilet/kotatsu/regrigerator/bathtub/microwave oven? That way I would never have to venture out into that cold, dark, unforgiving house around me." Here is a little history about how the kotasu developed in Japan: Long ago, a square, open hearth was set in the middle of the floor for heating and cooking. The shelf above the hearth, first seen in the 14th century, is said to be the forerunner of the modern kotatsu. Something resembling today's kotatsu was invented early in the 17th century, in the form of a rough wooden frame placed on the floor. There was a coverlet on top, hot charcoal in an earthenware pot inside the framework, and space all around for people to sit. With the introduction of electricity top Japan, it was not long before the kotatsu, in the form seen today, was developed. Relaxing around this source of heat was an excellent way for family members to grow closer to each other. On chilly days, everyone naturally gathered in the room which had the kotatsu, sitting beside one another to get warm and chat. After having a kotatsu for only a couple of months now, I can't imagine how I made it through last winter without one. The first thing I do in the mornings is turn to walk down to the living room and turn the kotatsu on. By the time I have fixed myself some breakfast it has warmed up and I can then slip under the cover to enjoy my breakfast. Even though I am able to see my breath in the mornings (yes, it is that cold in the house each winter morning) once I am under the toasty warm kotatsu I do not really notice how cold it is. Before I had a kotatsu it was almost painful to shovel down a quick breakfast in a room just a few degrees above freezing. But now I can sit back and relax because I now have a secret weapon against the notoriously non-insulated Japanese house. Kotatsu, it's not just a piece of furniture, it's a life saver!
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www.bizarreingredients.co.uk/japan/a/heater/heater.htm
Cover artwork for the UK release of 'Battle Heater' Battle Heater (1989) (AKA - Battle Heater: Kotatsu) Directed by Joji Iida Cast: Pappara Kawai, Akira Emoto, Kaoru Okunuki, Tomita Yasuko, Komiya Takay asu At the beginning, the scene is set with a monologue: You cannot neglect old things. A van ploughs its way through torrential rain before suddenly skidding off the darkened road and spiralling down an incline. Coming to rest at the bottom of the slope the driver, an electrician called Hama, breathes a sigh of relief then glances over at the passenger next to him. Incredibly, Hamas colleague Furuchi is still dozing, so the former quickly rouses him (with an electric shock no-less) and they both hurry outside to pick up all the pieces of electrical hardware that have fallen out the back of their van. Gathering everything up again, they quickly become obsessed with finding one of the missing items - a heater called a kotatsu. Eventually they find the small, table-shaped device and, after checking it for any sign of damage, they lovingly carry it into the back of the van. Furuchi is overjoyed, telling Hama that he needs the heater to help warm up his freezing apartment. When the Kotatsu is finally resting in Furuchis apartment, it picks its moment to mysteriously lunge forward and hit him. A short while later, the elderly Mr Nakagawa knocks on the door and borrows Furuchis soldering iron. Mr and Mrs Nakagawa, who live in one of the nearby apartments, pride themselves with the fact that they have never caused trouble for anyone (something they keep repeating to each other again and again). As Nakagawa and Furuchi talk, a blood-curdling scream fills the air. The screams are coming from upstairs where Hideko Shinden and her otaku lover Osuma are trying to dispose of the body of Hidekos husband. Soon after this Furuchi attempts to get the power supply working on the kotatsu so that he can finally heat his apartment. As he attempts to fix it, the punk band living next door crank up the amplifiers and start jamming. Amdist the scrappy improvisation, Furuchi grabs his screwdriver and tries to remove a small metal emblem stuck in the side of the heater. Straining to remove the silver seal, his exertions eventually cause him to fly backwards. Unfortunately, the screwdriver also flies backwards - right through the thin wall, into the next room and straight into the leg of one of the guitarists. The music stops abruptly and after a few seconds there is a knock at the door. The band burst in - minus their leader Sabii - and a panicking Furuchi pleads with them hysterically as they pin him to the floor. In the ensuing struggle the heater trips one of the gang up and he falls face first into a box of nails and screws. A shrieking Sabii (using his head to blast through the partition between the rooms) adds the final manic layer to the scene. With only his head sticking through the wall, he spares Furuchi from a pasting on the condition that he takes a message from the band to his girlfriend. The gang eventually leave the room and Furuchi hurriedly exits as well, to go and call his girlfriend from the main hall in the apartment block. With the room now empty, the mains power lead on the heater starts to rear up like a snake and sets about exploring the area. Eventually, the wandering power cable finds a suitable power supply and the heater starts to sap power at a huge rate. The power drain results in the band (who have resumed their impromptu jamming session) struggling to keep their amplifiers going. Meanwhile, in one of the apartments downstairs, the Nakagawas simply console themselves yet again with the fact that for all the years theyve lived in the block they have never harmed anyone. A few seconds later their clock explodes and an electrical cloud fries the pair of them in their beds. An elaborate pulley system they have constructed kicks in and two pieces of white cloth are pulled over the lifeless faces of the Nakagawas. Furuchi heads back to his apartment and grabs a duvet cover which he drapes over the heater. Settling down underneath it and getting ready to go to sleep, he is completely oblivious to the huge many-toothed creature that is menacing his legs. Just when it looks like its too late, Furuchi noisily slumps forwards onto the heater and the monster withdraws back into the heater. After a few moments he moves to one side of the room and opens the doors to a little shrine, dedicated to the God of Electricity. As Hama sits and prays the shrine flashes light all around him. The undertaker in charge of the Nakagawas funeral visits the apartment block, telling himself that he will do his best to honour the last wishes of the deceased. Clutching a bundle of letters to deliver to people in the building, he first makes his way to the Shindens apartment. Hideko is out so Osuma is left to try and get rid of the unwanted caller. Opening the door ajar Osuma uses the dead husbands head wrapped in a blanket as a disguise. The undertaker is perplexed by the pitiful, lifeless face but just as he becomes suspicious something isnt right, Hideko returns. She quickly grabs the letter and pushes her way into the apartment. As she does this she explains to the undertaker that her husband is ill and with that slams the door in his face. The next letter is addressed to Furuchi so the undertaker ventures downstairs to find an empty apartment. As the door is open he ventures inside, aiming to leave the envelope on top of the cloth covered heater in front of him. After a few seconds deliberation he decides to wait and sits down at the heater. A short while after this he is dragged screaming underneath the demonic kotatsu. Furuchi gives the strange silver seal from the heater to his girlfriend as a gift. During their meeting he also passes on the letter from Sabii, opening this she finds a pop-up card with a message. The card asks her to be at Furuchis apartment block for a meeting at 6 oclock in the evening the following day. Meanwhile, the kotatsu has started exploring the apartment block, causing as much mayhem as a walking, razor toothed heater is capable of... Comment: Even in the often deep and twisted realm of Japanese Horror there are still times when the humble viewer simply wants to kick back and let the old noggin indulge in a spot of bubblegum chewing. Finding myself in this position recently, I was fortunate to have what appeared to be the perfect stick of chewing gum in the shape of Joji Iidas Battle Heater: Kotatsu. This is one film that promised to be utterly inane and it certainly didnt disappoint on that score at least. Basically, Battle Heater is as pure an example of typically exaggerated 80s Horror Comedy or, perhaps more accurately, pure Eastern Horror farce as youre likely to get. A blank canvas splattered with throwaway humour and absolutely anything else that can be thrown into the pot to guarantee a handful of disposable chuckles. It is a deliberately messy, polish-free recipe creating a visual feast that certainly isnt going to be to everyones taste. A cranky beast full of manic performances, daft scripting, dodgy stop-motion work and a downright weird premise concerning a demonic heater! In terms of straight laughs, the pick of the gags in this one occur within the first half-hour. My favourite sequence is the first time that we meet Osuma and Hideko, with the former screaming hysterically at the upright torso of Hidekos murdered husband and Hideko herself standing at the kitchen sink chopping up more parts of the dead body. Also high in the laughter stakes is the sequence showing the demise of the Nakagawas, culminating in their home-made pulley system doing its job. Another scene of note occurs near the end of the film, when the kotatsu polishes off what is left of the corpse of Hidekos husband. In certain isolated sequences in Battle Heater there is an effortless, totally disposable delirium to it all frustratingly, this only occurs sporadically throughout. But to be sure, the best laughs in Battle Heater are definitely those tinged with that surreal, typically Japanese sense of black humour. While Battle Heater kicks off well, t...
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kang_bed-stove
Chinese building that housed such a sleeping platform, the heat of the cooking fire could be used for maintaining comfort. surface temperature, the bed would remain warm all through the night even though nobody arose to feed the fire. Traditional Chinese Dwellings (Zhongguo chuantong minju) (a bilingual text) has a few line drawings of kangs. The kang uses radiant heat the amount of which should be two degrees higher than that of the ambient air and should come from most surfaces of the room. London), one can see a man who may be the author sitting at a short-legged table that has been placed on the kang. Behind the kang is a fine window that lets much light into the room.