Bathing done right

Unfortunately for the interest of this blog, the past week has been pretty standard. Classes, juggling, friends, speaking Japanese - the works. The one thing that has been of particular interest lately is that this week and next week are finals, and so beyond having to begin studying for those, the end is drawing near! Don't get me wrong, I've definitely enjoyed several of my classes this semester....and there are several others that I have definitely not. Regardless, now that I know how the system works I some good ideas for what to do next semester, and I will be not be sad once this one is over.

With the lack of particularly interesting things happening, I'm going to take this opportunity to talk about something that did absolutely blow my mind this week. Baths.

As some of you may know, the way of taking a bath in Japan is completely different from in the US. Before you can set foot in a bathtub in Japan, one must first take a shower. Seems a bit redundant at first right? The reason is because you don't use any soap or shampoo in the tub. You don't put anything in the tub. Ever. Nothing but your nice, clean body. In Japan a bath isn't about cleaning, it's about enjoying the hot water, having a moment to relax and to release the stresses from the day. Also, the same water is used by everybody in the family. And why not? Since everybody is clean before they get in, the water stays clean, and so it makes sense not to waste the time or resources to drain and refill the bathtub for every member of the family (since in most Japanese families everybody takes a bath every night). Because of this system, Japanese bathtubs are usually in a room by themselves with a detachable shower head so you can shower not-in-the-tub.

Thankfully, this very different method of bath-tubbery was taught to us during the first week we got here (prior to meeting our host families), so I was adequately informed by the time that first bath came around. Having been here for around 4 months though, this couldn't have blown my mind this week right? I mean, yea it's a really efficient hot-water-enjoying-system, but I'm used to it by now. So what was so cool?

This week, I discovered what happens to that nice, still-clean water after it's gone cold the next day. I walked into the bathroom to brush my teeth the other day, and imagine my surprise to see a hose running across the middle of the (very small) room. I asked, my host mom about it, and it turns out that you can hook up a hose to the bathtub, connect it to the laundry machine, and it will use the bathtub water to do your laundry! Is that not the most efficient thing you've ever heard of!?!? I thought it was pretty incredible.

This is just a small example of an otherwise bigger thing that I love about Japan. In the US you'll often here people mentioning the "small things" that, if everybody did them, could make a huge difference in terms of cutting down waste and conserving resources. In Japan, these are already part of the culture. Water and food are never wasted, there are 6 different kinds of recycling and absolutely everybody sorts things out properly, people never use paper towels in restrooms. And those are just the examples that come to mind right now.

There's a lot more that could be said about baths in Japan, it's quite the thing here. While its pretty different, they seem to have gotten the bathtub thing right though.