5 Days in Korea 🇰🇷 café hopping, shopping in seongsu, the best korean bbq EVER 🥩

Today I'm going to show you some awesome Japanese ideas for keeping your house warm in winter. These are all some really budget friendly hacks and I'm implementing them in my house today. I'm going to go through a few different areas in the house that you might want to consider as well for keeping your property warm. These are windows, flooring, heating the house, bedding and washing. Things are done a little bit differently here in Japan so today with my trusty companion Millie we're going to be going through the house and getting it ready for a warmer winter than what I had last year. The average winter temperature in Wakayama is around five degrees so I'm not living in a place that has lots of snow or anything like that but coming from Queensland Australia five degrees is still very very cold for me. So this year I really wanted to ask some of my students at my Japanese school what do they do here in Japan to keep their houses warm and during this process of gathering information I discovered that a lot of these hacks are actually very budget friendly so I want to give it a try this year to see how well they're going to work in my house. So we're already at the end of November and the temperature has just started to drop in the last week or so so that was my cue to get the house ready. So I've packed up the summer rug and I've taken down the summer curtains which were the UV curtains and I'm using a microfiber mop just to give the house a good once over get everything clean ready to bunker down for the winter months. So my first hack is something I'd never heard of in Australia before. So the window I'm just preparing the window now but I heard about this bubble wrap product and it's not bubble wrap that you buy just to wrap things in it's proper bubble wrap that is double-sided it's hard to explain but it has the flat on each side. Now this product is sold as sort of an insulator for your windows it's really really easy to install you only need a spray bottle and some water and you cut it down to size. Now one of the students was telling me the benefit of this window bubble wrap is that it still lets all the light into your house so you'll see once I get the bubble wrap on this window it's not going to block any light coming in so the light that comes in will still warm your house but it's going to stop the cold air from coming in and it also works in reverse as well so you can use this same theory in summer to keep the hot air out. Now you can see I've got one of my windows already bubble wrapped and it hasn't really blocked any light coming into the house. Now I just want to interrupt this video to talk to you about a new blog post that I've written about Japanese hacks to stay warm in winter and on a budget. If you know I have a website www.chaineyjapan.com and I've just started a new blog post to keep you up to date with all the different things that I'm finding out along the way as I live here in Japan and as you already know I'm a qualified Japanese language teacher so I also offer Japanese language courses if you're interested in that. There's also the option for a one-on-one consultation for people who are interested in moving to Japan and need a little bit more one-on-one information. Now let's get back to the video. The next thing I heard about was this excellent sort of floor insulator. Now my floors already have like an insulation layer in them so that's quite fine on its own but what I'm going to do today is put down a hot carpet. So this floor insulator you put the foil side up and when you put the hot carpet on top of this foil it sort of directs the heat back up into the house instead of falling down into the floor. So this is my hot carpet that I put on top of the foil. I picked up this hot carpet at the local hardware store just at the end of last year's winter season so normally they're around six to seven thousand yen depending on what size you get. I think I picked this one up for four thousand. Now on top of that I put my winter rug and the winter rug is designed it says on it that it can take a hot carpet or sit on top of a hot carpet with no issues. So the hot carpet just radiates a bit of warmth that comes up under your feet. I wouldn't say it heats the room but it certainly does make things a little bit warmer. So later on I'm going to go around and do all the other windows in the house and get the bubble wrap on them. So today I only bought just a small pack of the bubble wrap just to see how easy it was to apply and I found that process really easy so I'm going to go and buy a big bulk roll which will be a lot cheaper. So I'm throwing in my curtains my summer curtains into the wash because I'm going to put my winter ones up a bit later on but I also wanted to show you what happens in winter with your washing. Now a lot of Japanese people do not have dryers in their homes and I'm no different I just don't have space for a drying machine so I'm going to get into that in a minute but today I have a brand new couch arriving. I bought a couch from Nitori it's a product called N-shield and it's supposed to be cat proof so I'm very much looking forward to that today because this little monster destroys things. The company I bought the new couch from Nitori is going to recycle my old couch on my behalf and take it away from me so I don't have to deal with it. Such a good service. I'm really glad the couch has arrived early this morning because I wanted to take you shopping just to show you some of the other hacks that the ladies at the school told me about staying warm when you're in bed and this is really important because there's nothing worse than trying to sleep when it's cold at night. It's all happening today because suddenly in the midst of having my sofa delivered I actually had another delivery which is for a video for next week and I'm super excited to show you what was delivered but you're gonna have to wait for next week for that one. Inside this delivery is camping goods and I'm so excited to show you all of the different camping goods that I ordered online and I'm actually going to use them camping next weekend and show you one by one all of the different products that I was able to get delivered to me here in Japan. But back to my sofa delivery. So, so far so good. All is going well and it seems to fit the space really well. So, back to the Japanese winter hacks and now I'm heading off to Nitori to buy a fluffy couch cover. Their new season items have just hit the store so I'm looking for something that will suit my sofa and I did find the perfect one which I have now ordered because unfortunately everything had sold out. There was a huge rush on warm items the minute the temperature dropped. Now I'm at the hardware store because another hack that I heard for in the bedroom is to put lots of blankets on your bed instead of sheets. So there is this milky feel they call it a milky feel I'm guessing that means it's a velvety feel and a lot of the ladies were telling me they don't actually use sheets in winter they use these velvet feel blankets and they lie in between these and they also use a heated electric blanket. Now there are these kotatsu they have a heated they're called a kotatsu which is a heated hot table and then you put one of these rugs or blankets over the top of the table and it's lovely and warm. Now it's too warm for me and once I get in there I usually can't get out so I'm not using the kotatsu. Another item that is really useful is these kaido. These ones go in your socks so you can put them in your socks when you go to work and keeps your feet warm and the other ones you just stick on your back. They're made up of little bits of iron I think that are activated by the air and I use these every winter so I'm buying a big bulk pack. Now last year for heating the house I used a kerosene heater but I'm not going to use it this year and the reason being is my parents are actually coming to visit me in Japan and my mum has asthma so the kerosene is going to affect her asthma and I did find it just a little bit smelly and you had to ventilate the house every couple of hours so I'm in the market for a new heater. Do you have any suggestions? There's carbon or halogen heaters here and I think these might be a way to go. Do you have any experience in these? Let me know in the comments I'd love to hear your thoughts. I do have a split system air conditioner which I can use but it's quite power hungry. Now when I was at Nitori I did buy this cable organizing box because my new sofa has the reclining function which means it's got two big power packs. So now up to the bedroom and I've got myself a light electric blanket so I'm going to use this one just to heat up the bed before I get in at the evening so I'm not going to run it all night. There's no timer function on this so I'm just going to heat my bed up so it's warm enough to get in when it's really cold. Now I already had the velvety feel blanket that you sleep on and I also had the pillow cover so I only needed to buy the velvety feel sheet. I guess you're going to call it a sheet because you're going to use it like a sheet and my futons are all season futons so I can use them all year round and in summer I tend to not use the cover and I have that cool pad I think I showed you in one of the other videos. So during the day I've done three loads of washing and as I mentioned before there are no dryers usually here in the houses so I have to take it to the coin laundry. Now it's actually really cost effective instead of owning a dryer and have it running all the time I usually do my washing like three or four loads on the weekend in winter and then I hire one of these big 27 kilo dryers. Now they take 100 yen for eight minutes and I only need 24 minutes so while my clothes are drying I usually time it so I go and do some shopping. Today I'm going to be shopping here at Evergreen so it's just a short walk from the laundromat so I just leave my car at the laundromat walk over to Evergreen and get some dinner. So another Japanese winter hack is to cook onabe and that's what I'm going to cook for you today. Onabe in Japanese basically just means pot so it means throwing all your veggies protein and sometimes noodles into one pot with some stock. Today's stock I'm going to use this kimchi nabe. I love a bit of kimchi it's nice and spicy so just what I need to warm my body in winter and I always throw in some kind of noodles I really love the udon noodles nice and thick and a little bit of tofu as well. I have a few other ingredients at home but this is about all I need it's really cheap. By the time I've done my shopping I wandered back to the coin laundry just to check out how my drying's going and for three dollars I've managed to dry my whole week's clothing so that was super easy and no troubles at all. So let's get in and make some nabe under the supervision of Millie of course and you'll notice that I'm wearing my apron that I got in prison and if you want to check out my prison video that will make a lot more sense. As you know from my previous videos coming to Japan was a huge goal of mine and now having achieved it I'm settling into more of a routine and part of my routine and what I really love to do is work on ways to actively save money and I try and do this in everything I do such as being conscious of my energy consumption and also not wasting food buying ingredients that I can use for a long period of time and make multiple dishes out of freezing any food that I don't use or can't eat so especially when you're cooking for one it's really hard to not be wasteful with your ingredients but I also want to cook my food myself I don't want to buy ready-made meals I want home-cooked meals so a package like this is actually three to four serves so I do usually make it up but I only put the noodles in one serve and then I can buy use those extra noodles I bought for the next meal that I cook so sort of cooking in bulk when you're only one and it means you've got to eat the same meal for a few days but it's definitely saving energy with using the gas etc so I do think it's good to still do home cooking even if you are one and it is going to save you money. So I've shared everything I know with you today do you have any other ideas are there any other ways to keep warm in winter that are budget friendly I'd love to hear from you in the comments I love reading your comments and your suggestions for me as well great to talk to you this week and I can't wait to see you next week with that exciting camping goods video and I'm excited to unbox that package that arrived earlier on talk to you again next week see ya