English Essay

To Splash or Not To Splash

When I moved to Japan twelve years ago and was looking for an apartment to rent, I was surprised to discover that none of the bathrooms, called ofuro in Japanese, had atoilet. The toilet was always off by itself in a tiny adjacent room. In the U.S., we’re accustomed to having the toilet in the same room as the shower or bath—an odd configuration, I’ve come tobelieve, especially if you live with several people. What do you do when you have to go and someone (my wife, for example) has been in the shower for forty-five minutes? The Japanese definitely got itright when they decided to keep the bathing facilities separate from the commode. While many Americans might be perplexed by this design, I think it is smart and very practical. It is just one ofseveral differences that make the Japanese ofuro superior to the typical American bathroom.
Many ofuro in Japan are built as modules, or self-contained units. The walls, floor, ceiling, and tubare all connected, creating a sealed, pod-like space in which to bathe. The shower nozzle is not above the tub but next to it, and the water runs onto the floor and down a drain. When you take abath, you can splash around all you want and not have to worry about flooding or water damage because the entire space is enclosed in a durable acrylic or plastic material. In an American bathroom,however, the shower nozzle is over the tub because the floor is usually tiled or carpeted and is not meant to get wet. Although there is a shower curtain or sliding door to prevent water from escaping, itis impossible to keep the room completely dry during a shower or bath, and you have to wipe up any drips or puddles that accumulate to avoid moisture damage.
Another striking difference betweenJapanese ofuro and an American bathroom is in the dimensions of the tub. A Japanese tub is usually shaped like a square or a stout rectangle, and it is about three-feet deep, which means you sit up...