Drain Thing

Aaron here

We’ll be heading back to the U.S. and A. in a little bit, but I wanted to share some part of our regular day to day life here. This is my most hated aspect of Japan. It is our shower drain. It’s a strange gouge in our shower room about two feet long, one foot wide, and one foot deep. There is no grate over it, and the water from the shower head falls right into it so you have to straddle this hole to receive any of the precious cleansing liquid. The ground is made of smooth concrete and can get a bit slippery when the soap starts to flowing. There have been a couple of times when my foot has slipped in there and luckily I fell backwards and was able to bend my knee. If I had fallen sideways I might have snapped my shinbone in half.



We were freaked out by this thing at first, and balanced these squat wooden pallets (you’re supposed to put them in the closet. They allow air to circulate under your futon mat…one of the many delightful futon accessories) over the chasm. This would allow for a nice shower without the anxiety of a possible broken tibia. Unfortunately, these things are made out of soft untreated wood, and they don’t take kindly to multiple daily immersions in water. We pretty quickly had to decide between a dangerous canyon, or standing on rotten moldy wood that gave off a wicked stench that seemed to linger on the soap. I was tired of smelling worse after the shower than before and decided to toss out the wood.

Now, if you’re any student of Japanese society you may be thinking, “In Japan you are to sit while showering. So stop yer moaning and get to squatting”. A valid point, but the tallest shower stool is quite short, and being a little tall I find it uncomfortable to shower with my knees next to my ears.

The discomfort of the bathing is a slight annoyance next to the terror while cleaning this damn hole. All of the drains (except for the toilet) end up emptying into our nearest river so they don’t want any “chunkys” leaving the house. So, the drain at the bottom of the hole has a circumference of a medium sized pancake. In this pancake is what I can only describe as the top of a bell. This “bell” barely fits inside the “pancake” and will only allow a small drizzle to pass through, blocking anything bigger than two atoms mating. This is where the depth of the hole comes in handy because it’ll usually take a couple hours for all the water to drain out of its tiny passageway, and it’s nice to have it contained in one handy gorge. Since nothing bigger than liquid passes through I have to regularly snap on a pair of heavy duty cleaning gloves (they don’t make them thick enough for this duty) start to scooping all the soap scum, hair, and dead skin cells off the top of the “bell”. But hey, I’d much rather kneel on cement with my butt wiggling in the air as I stretch myself down into a filthy scum box, that can never be fully cleaned, than risk the chance that some poor duck might choke on some of my diseased human skin.

This may sound quite whiney (you’re right) but remember. This is a first world country, the second largest economy in the world. If I encountered this in a Thailand or Cambodia I’d say, “It’s all they could afford”, but we live in teacher housing and it’s proof that America isn’t the only first world country that can treat their teachers shabby. There are many things in this country I’ll miss, but this isn’t one of them.