Cozy toilet

It’s been snowing so often this winter that the duck and I aren’t impressed anymore, not as much as we were when we saw our first snow in Tokyo anyway. If anyone had asked me back then what I’d miss about living in Japan I might have said something along the lines of Konbini, beautiful seasons, awesome snacks, train adventures, travel opportunities, or my work. I do. What I currently miss most profoundly, however, is our Tokyo toilet! I’m not talking about one of those high-end toilets with all those fancy controls that probably require a thorough perusal of the manual before you can fully appreciate them; our toilet didn’t even have the built-in water recycling washing sink that many toilets in Japanese homes sport. It simply came with a function that I didn’t even know about until one of our housemates had decided to make use of it in the middle of winter and forgot to turn it off: a toilet seat heater! The only heating in the house came from the AC units in each bedroom and the living room (noticeably not the kitchen, hallway, toilet-room or shower room) that provided such a fleeting heat that ten minutes after pressing the ‘off’ button on the remote, it felt as if the room had not been heated in weeks. Leaving the heated area of the house was something the duck and I actively dreaded. This new discovery, fortunately, gave us another room that we didn’t feel the urge to leave asap in fear of ending up as ice sculptures. The tiny toilet room had turned into one of my favorite rooms in the house! Now, whenever I find myself in a cold bathroom, I think back longingly to those days when the toilet seat heater was the #1 thing that made winter in an older Japanese house more bearable (it also provided a toasty resting spot for the duck).