I saw a post about using electric blankets, but that sounds expensive to me. A couple of Xmas’s ago, I bought 湯たんぽ (hot water bottles) for everyone in the family, and we love them. We now have a few ceramic ones that are amazing. I fill them with water heated on top of the kerosene heater, or you can use a hot water pot and toss it under the blankets an hour before going to bed. The ceramic 湯たんぽ will keep my bed warm for two nights!
Don’t waste money on electricity; use a 湯たんぽ instead! I also put one on the floor beneath my work desk to put my feet on when it gets really cold.
20 comments
We received our ceramic 湯たんぽ as gifts, but they look just like the ones on [marru.net](https://marru.net/?pid=95272447)
​
https://preview.redd.it/cwyqwml1ubea1.jpeg?width=560&format=pjpg&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=151d31ec6f1a73899c1c96f51179eeb64c97cbd9
Any links to order it from ?
A friend of mine got horribly scalded by a leaking hot water bottle in Japan so I’m definitely an electric blanket kinda gal.
Nice and cozy. Just a caveat: don’t fall asleep with an uncovered yutampo directly on your skin, as I did one night. I ended up with minor low degree burns on my leg (much to the triumph of my colleagues, who had been warning me for years that this precise thing would happen if I wasn’t careful, they just *knew* it!). Of course, use a cover and some common sense.
Ghetto pro-tip from my student days: use a 2L PET bottle and fill it with hot – not boiling – water. It should keep you going for a couple of hours at least.
Wool. Nothing beats wool.
I sleep without any heaters or anything. Its not cold. I only turn it on between 18:00 (time I get home) and 22:00. I dont leave it on, I just use it for 10-20 minutes and try to stand the cold for 20-30 mins.
My kid insists I use the yutanpo to warm her bed before she gets in now. We obviously don’t let her sleep with it, but it’s nice to crawl into warm covers!
Electric blankets really aren’t expensive.
One of my presentations in uni was about keeping warm in winter and heating in Japan. Hit water bottles are super common in Germany but not the hard ones but the ones made out of silicone. Only people I ever knew before coming here using a hard water bottle made out of metal where my grandparents. Funny how some things are being considered ancient in one part of the world and are super common in the other.
But yeah, all for hot water bottles, just prefer the soft ones.
Ceramic hot water bottles sound like a recipe for burning yourself. Just go with the regular rubbery bottle ones we’re all used to (you can get them on Amazon, definitely pricey compared to what I’d pay in England but whatever).
Plus, if you get one of those foot warmer pouch thing (that you put your feet in under the desk while working etc) and put your hot water bottle in there, your feet will stay warm.
Another option (especially for rooms with small but drafty windows) is to build an airtight seal inner window (not a sliding one, just a sheet of plastic that is cut perfect to size and has some rubber around the edge to compress against the window frame) since a lot of the heat generated is lost through windows – especially shit single-pane windows in Japanese homes.
The window option may seem like overkill but since we did it in our rented apartment (brand new but still shit windows lol), we have the heater on a lot less and it takes a lot longer for the room to get cold. The idea is that if your room is airtight, any heat generated should stay in the room so your PC running and generating heat would stay in the room (at least for a lot longer). On the flipside, you’re more likely to get a build of moisture so a dehumidifier is needed and/or ventilating the house when you’re not at home.
***~~湯たんぽ~~*** ***こたつ****
Rediscovering hot water bottles and wearing hats to sleep? Guys it’s not the 1800s. Where the heck is everyone living? Tents?
My place never gets colder than about 13 C ….. get a place with good insulation and plenty of sun
Note we are all sat here discussing this issue about a fucking G7 country, I shit thee not.
Putting one on the floor is okay but be careful with putting them inside a bed or on the sofa under blanket.
Mold grows much faster than you think inside the sofa or futon due to temperature differences (kind of condensation).
I am also a 湯たんぽ lover, and I have end up disposing expensive futon within a one season a few times in the past. It will cost you more if you use it in the wrong place.
You can of course use a Futon drier but it will cost you more in terms of electric bills.
I still use it because it’s so warm, cozy, and less static.
Boiling water every night (especially for multiple beds) is going to get expensive too. The water and the electricity or gas to heat it up.
Electric blankets aren’t expensive.
i heard people going all electric in their homes replacing gas heater faced surprisingly high bills this winter season compared to when they were just using gas for heating
I’m not saying yutanpo’s aren’t great, but it’s a little ironic to call e-blankets expensive when you’re using a kerosene heater😅
Yutanpos are fun, but it does feel so much better when the eblanket heats the whole bed and I can sleep naked in winter with any other heaters off. My eblanket uses less than 2000yen per month. Really hard to beat that.
I’ve found the quickest and most effective stop-gap measure, would be to cover your windows with a layer of bubble wrap (it’s even better if you can do two…)
[How to bubble wrap windows. ](https://dengarden.com/home-improvement/How-to-Bubble-Wrap-Windows)
I picked up a large roll from a hardware shop, and just used double-sided tape.
Cheapest way for me was to practice Wim Hof (deep breathing and cold water exposure).
That helped a lot, but on days where the weather dips below 0c, then I also wear a sweater, thick fleece pants, and wool socks inside. I seldom turn the heater on in my home during winter (if ever).
​
This approach is definitely not for everyone though!!!