Volume 11　日本のお風呂は素晴らしい!


Relaxing in the Bathtub?

Ann Slater: Hello everyone and welcome to Cultural Crossroads for May. This is Ann.

Michael Rhys: And I'm Mike. Hi. 

Ann: We are once again very happy to be with you. And this month we are going to be talking about one of, well, a very popular topic, I think . . .

Michael: Yes.

Ann: . . . which is taking a bath.

Michael: Yes. Taking a bath.

Ann: And how is it done in England? Like, what is the typical . . . ?

Michael: OK. Ha-ha. How do I explain?

Ann: Of course it's different from Japan.

Michael: It is very different. And I think bath time in the U.K. is one aspect of British life that I find almost embarrassing.

Ann: Really?

Michael: Yeah.

Ann: Now why would that be? Ha-ha.

Michael: Well, let me explain. You know, bath time in the U.K. for me was never really a truly relaxing or enjoyable experience. It was just to get clean. And it wasn't very good at that either.

When I was growing up in the U.K. and lived in the U.K. the water was heated by using what we called an immersion heater, which is basically a big tank and in that tank was a heating element immersed in the water, hence the name. And that would heat up the water and that's the water you'd have for your bath and in fact all the hot water in the house. And I always found when I ran a bath it would only fill up halfway before you ran out of hot water. And the water you're in is rapidly getting colder and colder and colder. So you wash very quickly and you can't rinse off because you've run out of hot water.

Ann: So, ballpark, how long do you think you spent in the bath? How many minutes?

Michael: Oh, good question. Ten minutes maximum, maybe.

Ann: Uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah. So no, there, you, there was no soaking or anything like that.

Michael: There was no soaking. And so now having experienced the Japanese style of bathing, I will never go back to the U.K. style. If I ever went back to the U.K. to live, I'm taking the Japanese bathroom with me. That's the one thing I could not do without. 

Ann: Yeah, you know, it's got a very ritual, kind of, aspect I think, in Japan compared to in the States and, meaning it's not only a way of getting clean, which is part of the ritual aspect, but also of relaxing and leaving behind the day and moving into the relaxation at the end of the day.