Bathroom

When talking about Japan, the bathroom is always a fascinating topic. The famous heated toilet seats are particularly intriguing, and I'll be devoting a separate post to them. The Japanese's attachment to the bathtub is also surprising in our "shower" culture. Below, you'll see two photos of standard Japanese hotel bathrooms.

Even the smallest space can accommodate a toilet bowl with an extensive panel for functions such as the bidet and seat heating. Sometimes, a person can barely squeeze in there ;)

Łazienka w hotelu w Hiroszimie / Bathroom in a hotel, Hiroshima

Łazienka w hotelu w Tokio / Bathroom in a hotel, Tokyo

Why Japanese insist on installing these bathtubs? Even my photos show how tiny they are, so what's the point of comfort? Both the heated seat and the bathtub become important after the first day you come home from the damp, cold Japanese winter or spring. Sitting on the heated seat brings only delightful warmth, and after a shower (even a hot one), you sit with your legs drawn up to your knees in a tub full of hot water, soaking in it. This "treatment" makes you want to explore Japan again, instead of wiping your nose and fighting a cold.

On a practical note: it's good to remember that the most popular faucet model is still the two-handle type, which we've almost lost the habit of using in Poland. One handles cold water and the other very hot, so it's best to start by turning on the cold handle to avoid scalding.

Bathrooms in three-star hotels have another striking feature. It's not uncommon for the bathroom to be entirely molded from plastic and integrated into the room. In Europe, similar solutions can be found in the F1 hotels. This is a very convenient solution, as wet walls won't absorb water, and the likelihood of flooding the floor below due to an overflowing bathtub is significantly reduced.

Speaking of hotels, you'll find different types of bathrooms in different types of hotels. In addition to the classic bathrooms, there may also be:

• Shared bathrooms – in hostels and capsule hotels. While in the former, there's usually no distinction between men's and women's bathrooms (unless there are separate floors), in capsule hotels, women and men have bedrooms and bathrooms on separate floors, and they're not allowed to enter each other's rooms.

• Public baths – available as an optional extra in some hotels, next to the bathrooms in the rooms, and in traditional Japanese hotels (ryokan), the only option for bathing. In the latter, the room only has a sink and toilet, and for bathing, you go to a communal bath – also separate for men and women. There's a place to undress and leave all your clothes. Then you go to small shower stalls where you wash thoroughly, and then you can enter a hot pool. This is a hotel version of the hot springs, or onsens, for which volcanoes are famous. I'll write about onsens separately, as I'm a huge fan of this phenomenon.

To sum up - the bathroom in Japan, although not spacious, plays an important role and it is worth trying various versions of it if you have the opportunity.