Having drunk a lot of tea, it seems only
natural to visit the bathroom. The
typical bathroom consists of three rooms, rather than one.
The toilet has its own closet. A second room has lavatory, mirror, and
medicine chest. The third room is really
the bathroom, with tub and shower. Quite
a sensible arrangement-- no sense in the person using the toilet for his
personal reading room standing in the way of someone needing the lavatory to
primp.
The unusual part is the heated toilet
seat, the height of decadence! Most have
bidet features as well. One good thing
is the little hand-washing faucet above the tank lid. It comes on automatically when you flush the
toilet. The water drains into the toilet
tank to be used for the next flush. That
makes sense, too.
(Sorry, no picture of the hand-washing
tank lid. What kind of tourist takes
pictures of toilet stools?)
A few public restrooms have the heated
seats, but every home and every hotel we have visited has them. The puritanical stingy Yankee in me rises
up. True, it does save some water, but
think how much Japan could cut its electrical bill by the one prudent step of
banning heated toilet seats.
A few public restrooms still have the old
squatter. Given the choice, I guess I
would opt for the heated toilet seat.
Footwear
is another custom foreign to the Yankee.
When you visit someone’s house, you always remove your shoes and don slippers.
Each resident will have his/her own
slippers. There will be guest slippers,
too, because as host, you provide slippers for your guests. The two group homes we visited had slippers
for visitors, as did the traditional Japanese inn where we stayed in Takayama.
As you come into the house, there will be
an entranceway, usually tiled, usually a step below the level of the main
floor. There may be a bench or chair to
sit on while you change footwear. Slip off
and on shoes are quite popular. The
young and dexterous can slip in and out of the house, changing footwear appropriately,
nearly without pause if their street shoes don’t have to be laced.
You wear your slippers about the house. If you go out the patio door, there will be a
set of grunge slippers to wear into the yard and garden area. Simple!
Except there’s more.
In the toilet room, there will be a set of
slippers waiting at the door. You should
remove your slippers and put on the toilet slippers while using the WC.
I thought I had it all down pat. The bedroom of a traditional home has a straw
mat called a tatami covering the bedroom floor.
The bed consists of a futon or duvet on the floor.
After I had
made quite a few trips carefully treading between the two futons spread out for sleeping, not folded up as in the picture, the Goodwife
informed me that I really shouldn’t be walking on the tatami with my slippers
on. Bare feet or socks in the bedroom.
Well,
there you have it. Just when you think you have something mastered, life throws
you a curve ball.
At least you have to admit, that the footwear
custom keeps the slipper-makers hoofing it.
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