Saving Water Japanese Style

The green as bean folks at TreeHugger have an amusing post of how to save water by showering Japanese style:

To clean yourself before you got into the bath water, you did not use a conventional shower, but sit on a stool with a wooden bucket and ladle, soap and a sponge, and in the more modern showers, a hand shower that was is used when needed for rinsing and never left on to run into the drain. Sitting while you shower is safer and I found a lot more relaxing; having no water running meant that I could take as long as I wanted.

One of the comments below the post noted how the Japanese reuse the bath water to be used inside clothes machine washers, a great idea that draught stricken LA should consider implementing. If anything, it goes to show how innovation is born out of necessity, and perhaps in the coming years as LA begins to battle water shortages, these sort of practices won't seem so strange and we can balance convenience with careful resource management.

[image from The Japanese Bath]

Comments (1)

This is a diagram for a typical onsen -which are establishments you pay to attend.

In the Japanese homes I am familiar with, the bath was drawn for communal use (maybe 2-3 times a week?). Yes, you shower to clean yourself before hand so that you enter the bath tube clean. The tub also has a thermally insulative cover to keep it warm for the next person to use. With the exception of getting use to the shower not being in the tub, we got up to speed rather quickly with this way of bathing and enjoyed it.

Even the ryokans (kind of like a bed and breakfast) we stayed at employed this practice of everyone sharing the tub of water with cleansing before soaking.

posted by jocie-o on October 22nd 2007 at 2:43pm
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