Instructions: I could tell it was going to be a cold day in Tokyo if the first thing I saw when I woke up was my breath, condensing as I exhaled.

Japanese feel close to nature, I think, because nature is so close. You cant avoid it. Enduring an East Coast-type climate, most people have neither central heat nor central air conditioning.

When it comes to energy, Japan lives in a perpetual crisis. It imports all its gas and oil. Most homes, as well as small businesses and schools, rely on space heaters and kerosene stoves. In classes, students covet the desks near enough to the heater to be warm, but not so close as to get sweaty.

Granted, I lived in Japan during an oiru shokku, one of the OPEC-inspired oil shortages. Even in centrally heated offices, thermostats were set to 60 in winter, and what felt like 80 in the sticky summer.

Out of perversity, I spent my first Tokyo winter without a heater in my apartment. Intending to go native, I made do with a kotatsu, a low table with a light bulb-like heater attached on the underside. (In the old days, it used hot coals.) Drape a padded blanket over the table, set a second table top over the blanket and stick your legs underneath. Youre perfectly comfy, with toasty toes, wearing a down vest and sitting on a cushion atop the tatami mats. Youre comfy, that is, as long as you dont move.

The kotatsu is the near ultimate in energy conservation; how much more efficient to heat several pairs of legs in a tiny space rather than the air in an uninsulated room or house. Before TV created the couch potato, there were unbudging kotatsu addicts. Carefully tucked in, you chat, drink, snack or watch TV - and dread anything that requires leaving the coziness.

Properly, families dont eat meals at a kotatsu. But in tiny apartments like mine, the kotatsu was the dining table, kitchen table, coffee table, night stand and end table all rolled into one.

The ideal way to cope with a frigid evening was to set a bubbling ceramic pot in the center of the kotatsu (no having to get up for seconds) and share a leisurely meal with a friend.

A winter favorite is oden, a stew of fish dumplings and vegetables. In truth, oden is best eaten at a small shop, where you sit at the counter and order from steaming trays in front, or at a street vendors cart. The colder youve been, the more delicious the broth.

Here in the Bay Area, when the days begin warming, we are lulled into forgetting any weather worries. But on those unexpected chilly nights, we can pretend the electricity crisis makes us suffer in the cold, and comfort ourselves with a pot of stew.

If you wish to make oden, a flameproof ceramic pot (donabe) that disperses heat slowly works best. The pot and the fish cake ingredients are available at Japanese and other Asian groceries.

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