Day 25

7-7-08

Japanese people sure are dedicated to their every-single-night bathing rituals. I began to notice such when, too tired to take a shower, I politely declined and got the you-are-so-insane look. Today, the bath mania manifested in full. The catalyst: our shower broke. No more hot water for us. But did this stop anyone? Did anyone wait the day for the water to get fixed? No. We filled the bathtub the old-fashioned way. The really old-fashioned way. As in, kettles of boiling water. I think every pot that could fit on the stove was there, merrily heating up until they could be rushed down the hall to the bath (accompanied by cries of "Hot, hot, hot!"), empty into the tub, and refiled, the cycle beginning again. With a half-hours worth of manual labor, we managed to fill the tub and get it piping hot. Truly, it was a much more enjoyable bath than most, because I could imagine living in the 14th century--and my bath-filling methods would be historically accurate.