This is my first week back from Japan and as I try to stop going to bed at 6 a.m. here are the things most stuck on my mind:
1) The Japanese are too reliant upon technology: every toilet seat has a range of options. This includes some options that are passable (i.e. heated seats and a toilet vent?). However, every seat also comes with bidet. Now maybe I am alone in this but when I have a shower, I turn on the water, wait to get the temperature right and then get into the shower.
I don’t get in first and then spray myself with scalding hot or cold water until I get it right. That seems downright psychotic. A bidet seems like nothing more than a shower pointed at some really sensitive skin with no way to test the temperature.
2) Bring on the Cariboo winter: my wife loves hiking. We were talking about going hiking in the Japanese Alps with some ladies from tourism in Tokyo. They were really worried about the baby being too cold. People were wearing full down jackets and thick sweaters. Yet, it was around 30 degrees with something like 90 per cent humidity. Furthermore, my wife had informed me temperatures would be similar to Canada so I was wearing my last piece of clean clothing; a nice warm sweater. Meanwhile, she was wearing shorts and a tank top.
3) My son’s barely six months old and is already way cooler than me: I’ve neither been naked at numerous Buddhist temples (diaper changes), made the women of an entire island nation giddy nor did they ask to hold me and, according to my wife, I did more complaining.
4) The Japanese are smarter than me: in Japan, a lot of the beds we encountered consisted of tatami mats on the floor and as previously mentioned, the weather was hot and humid. For a while, as students, we had a bed which consisted of a mattress slightly raised by slats on the floor. Yet when the Japanese do it, it smells grassy and feels pretty nice; when we did it, it grew mould.
5) My wife integrated lightning fast: they don’t have garbage cans anywhere is public. Sometimes you can search for hours without running into a garbage can.
Yet, paradoxically, there’s no garbage anywhere; it’s extremely clean. My wife in what apparently seemed like the only logical solution to her started eating things like muffins with the wrapper and all.
P.S. after reading it, my wife says “I’m very eco-conscious okay?”