Turn the heater on!

[imomus]

A couple of weeks ago I complained that Japanese houses are freezing in winter. But it has to be said that if they weren't so cold, they wouldn't be so cool... I mean they wouldn't contain the little focused, glowing points of happiness which are Japanese heaters. The pictures here show some I've collected over the past few weeks, starting with a kerosene heater I saw today in Kyoto's Efish Cafe, a heater identical to one we used to have in Scotland when I was a child at our cottage in Auchterarder.



Other heaters, painted in bright primary colours, look like lawnmowers or support a bubbling kettle, an Asian tradition which goes back thousands of years, and somehow makes me think of a Chinese hermit in a small mountain hut, reading poetry as he huddles over his heater and sips his cup of tea. Honestly, who needs more from life?

Comments

[chuckdarwin.livejournal.com]

Is the winter as long there as it is here (UK)?

[polocrunch.livejournal.com]

Have these Japanese no respect for the environment? Surely, all this leakage of heat is a terrible waste of energy.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You have to remember that these heaters are used instead of a central heating system, and that Japanese energy efficiency is amongst the highest in the world.

[bartkolounger.livejournal.com]

Are there a lot of house firesd in Japan? My mother has created a fear of space heaters in me.

I don't think I could live in Japan I hate being cold. That being said I live in a northern Ontario town whose average temperature for 8 months of the year is well below -20C.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

That doesn't really answer the charge, now does it? :)

kettle on the hob

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

You're quite right about the heaters and kettles, despite the drawbacks of cold and possible asphyxiation, there is something very fuuryuu about them. I used to maximise my energy use by boiling water with mine all the time.

You may be familiar with furyu already, but I can find surprisingly little about it online. There's this (http://www.haikudesigns.com/lamp5.htm), but I wonder if furyu isn't actually the prototype of this slow-life thing, and, also, something with long roots going back to the erimitism of China, which was, of course, based on the nature-loving tendencies of Daoism, (a philosophy that appeals to me as a happy mix of the nature-worship of shinto and the philosophy of Buddhism).

quiet rain

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

Just found this in a story (Quiet Rain) from one of my favourite writers, Nagai Kafu, who is also my current avatar here:

In a day when lads and maidens of good families were busying themselves in the movement to outlaw smoking and drinking, it was nonsense to think of a clean, quiet pipe in the morning, of the pleasant bitterness of well-brewed tea, of properly heated sake. One could do no better than to sew one's own clothes in the manner of the old Zen monk, or to take a lesson from a hermit's book, and rake leaves for warming one's own sake.

[pintele.livejournal.com]

Happy day-before-your Birthday, Momus!

[nomorepolitics.livejournal.com]

Interesting interior design for a cafe: the three huge suitcases and blackboard; was the place used as a classroom before? or do they have lectures there for their customers?


Green Tea and Eastern Religions 400yen
Cognac Coffee and Philosophy 700yen
Earl Gray and Colonial History 250yen
Moccachino and Contemporary Art 450yen

[imomus.livejournal.com]

They do have English lessons there (as in many Kyoto cafes). Here's a picture of the outside of the cafe:



And here's (http://www.shinproducts.com/index_efish.html) their website. This cafe and another we visited yesterday called Prinz (http://www.achieve-house.net/cafe9.html) (lovely lush place by the art school) are designed by a guy called Shin Nishibori.

[nomorepolitics.livejournal.com]

I wasn't too far off. English lessons, and gift shop with crafts, furniture... it looks like a full blown business.

The website is perfectly sweet.

[pigpog.livejournal.com]

i need one of those badly. shanghai's buildings are just as poorly insulated as japan's.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

They sort of make me think "obscure sci-fi tv series being played in some kind of desert place". I mean, who WOULDN'T be able to resist one if they found one at a west market? Oh, boy, they are so sci-fi.

japanese heaters

[(Anonymous)]

its not about design, its about functionality...the cooking aspect of japanonaise heaters is the best. open topped parafin heaters make great grounds for baked yakimo and traditional potatoes or popping a big nabe pot to bubble away with plenty cabbage, kimichi and pork, its not just a heater, its a slow cooker....cover the top with foil throw on a few eringi japanese mushrooms with butter and melt when you eat em, for the older grilled non flat topped versions, stick your yakitori skewers at safe angles for slow char grilled treats...but momus drones on about design and other pish for his own gratification....parafin stoves have other uses than weblog vacant commentary

Re: japanese heaters

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

But there is some kind of difference in every "design" of one of each heaters he have posted a picture on, right? A product that's ONLY functionally wouldn't have, atleast in my oppinion, THAT many variations as above.

But at the same time I get the idea that they are a tradition brought into the design world only to make the same thing be more variated, because that is what people want in the end. Something that doesn't look like the neighbours. Etc, etc, etc.

Re: japanese heaters

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Cap, my theory is that Japanese industrial designs are inspired by all the different fish you see here. See Sunday's entry about scooters, a companion to the heaters piece.

Re: japanese heaters

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Hey Kovac, your tone is getting more lyrical, nice!