My Japanese Bathtub

I'm used to the whole thing but if you don't know about taking a bath in Japan, I'm going to explain it real slow. This is my bathroom in Japan. I mean Bath-Room, because in Japan a toilet and bathtub do not go together, they are separate. As a Japanese person would say, why would you want something dirty like a toilet next to your bathtub? You get clean in one place and relieve your bladder in another. Anyways, one of the things I miss when I'm back in America is my bathroom. As you discovered in one of my previous posts, my toilet, with all its buttons and butt cleaning gadgets is missed as well.

Anyways, here is how it goes: After I get back from a long day of playing guitar and Sushi out on the town, I'm ready for my nightly bath. I open the door and push the "fill up bathtub button" and my bathtub fills up with water. It is set to fill up with as many liters as I want, so if I was a big fat guy, I could set it so it fills up with less water. The Bath-Room is a separate room with a bathtub and shower all contained in there. So you could go in there and spray water all over the place, up on the ceiling, down on the floor, on the walls, it doesn't matter. Their ain't no toilet in there so you can't get the toilet paper wet, basically the whole thing is a waterproof compartment.

But I'm not in there yet, because I'm checking my email as it is filling up at my desired temperature of 42 Celsius. 42 Celsius is 107.6 Fahrenheit and if you didn't know, 42 Celsius is the generally accepted bathwater temperature in Japan. It feels a little too hot if you aren't used to it but after years in Japan it feels normal to me. You could set it a little lower if you are a big baby and can't deal with it.

After about ten minutes a speaker on the wall tells me the bath is done with Pachabel's Cannon in the key of C and an announcement in Japanese saying: "Your Bath is Now Ready!" You can probably change the song but I haven't figured it out yet. Now I'm ready to get clean. Now here is the deal: You can't get in the bath without washing yourself real good. Japanese don't go for any soap in the bathtub. A Japanese bath equals a shower with vigorous scrubbing with a painful nylon cloth and soap and a good rinse before climbing in there. You also get a groovy plastic chair to sit on if you like taking your time. There is a mirror so you can sit there all you want and shave or whatever. If you spend an hour or two in there and the bath gets cold, there is a reheat button that will bring the temperature back up the standard 42 C. Click on the photo over there for a close-up!