A kotatsu (炬燵) is a low table with a heater under its frame. A thick blanket covers the frame, and a flat tabletop sits on top of the blanket. Slide your legs underneath, and the blanket holds the heat around them. The rest of the room stays as cold as a Japanese winter usually is. For a few months every year, the kotatsu becomes the one place in the house nobody wants to leave.
Heat where you actually sit
Builders designed traditional Japanese houses for the hot, humid summer. They are open and airy, so in winter they get cold and draughty. Central heating never became the norm in Japan the way it did in colder countries. The kotatsu solves the problem with a simple trick. It does not try to warm the whole room. It heats only the small space where you sit, and a thick blanket keeps that heat in. Old kotatsu stood over a small pit in the floor with hot coals inside. Modern ones have an electric heater under the tabletop, complete with a thermostat. But the basic idea has not changed at all.
The gravity of a warm table
Once winter comes, the kotatsu often becomes the centre of family life. People eat there, watch TV there and do homework there. Quite a few simply fall asleep there, with their legs still under the blanket. Once you settle in, getting up to fetch something from across the room takes real willpower. Everyone in Japan knows this feeling, and people joke about it. Cats love a kotatsu as much as people do. A pet curled up half under the blanket is one of the most familiar sights of a Japanese winter.
Words & idioms to take away
Idioms & proverbs to carry away
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布団 (futon): here, the thick blanket that covers the kotatsu frame and holds in the heat. Japanese uses the same word for the bedding you sleep on.
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蜜柑 (mikan): a small mandarin orange that is easy to peel. It is the classic winter snack at a kotatsu.