"Enough"?

In the early days of our time in Japan, my CH joined a local health club so he could swim. It wasn't terribly expensive, but it was an inconvenient membership. He had to get up early and finish by noon at the latest. In fact, he often got up to swim while I was asleep and I was still asleep when he returned. After a few years of this, he started losing the drive to get up in the wee hours and rush out for a swim, particularly in the winter, and we bought a treadmill and he walked on it at home.

Fast forward until about 3 years ago and my CH started to have problems with his foot which kept him from walking on our completely manual treadmill. Since it has no machine driving the belt, you have to pull extra hard with your feet to move it so having a lame foot makes using it impossible without significant discomfort.

When a flyer magically appeared in our mailbox offering a reasonable deal on a day-time membership (9:00-5:00) at my CH's former health club for only about $80 a month, I strongly urged him to return to swimming. Though he wanted to swim again, he was somewhat hesitant to pay the monthly fees because I'd just quit my job and our income had dropped by about half. I assured him that his health was a high enough priority for us to make cut-backs elsewhere to accomodate his health club membership.

Since he started back up again, he's been using the same swimming trunks he's had all these years. He's had two pair for almost a decade and a half and one of them gave up the ghost yesterday. As I was fishing out the remaining pair, I got to pondering about how much is "enough". Does he really need two pair of swimming trunks or should one be enough? I concluded that he needed two so they could be swapped out and washed without interfering with his exercising, and so he has a back-up pair if one is damaged or lost.

From a rational viewpoint, "enough" should be something which is objective. Each person should be able to assess her need and figure out what is "enough". In reality, it's highly subjective. One person's "enough" is another's "highly insufficient" or "too much." This is something which is frequently brought home to me when I read the Apartment Therapy web site and people talk about the size of their "tiny" or "small" apartments which are always at least 1/4 bigger than mine (and often twice or three times as big). When someone asked if a couple could live in a 400 sq. feet place, one person said that you could only manage it if you spent as little time as possible in the apartment and spent as much time as possible outside in cafés, restaurants or other public spaces. My CH and I live in a place which is about 365 sq. feet (so I've been told) and manage to feel comfortable in it. We feel no compulsion to get out as often as possible. I daresay we could probably actually manage an even smaller space with one less room though it'd be very difficult to teach private lessons with one less room than we have now and it would require losing a few computers and getting a smaller television.

I think most people could get by with less than they have and a vast deal less than they believe is the least they can deal with. One of the things that living in Japan has made me grateful for is that the situation has really fully prepared me for the idea of scaling down my lifestyle and being satisfied with what I have. I used to want a bigger place with separate rooms for various functions (an exercise room, an entertainment room, etc.). Now, all I can think about is that it'd just be more expensive to heat in the winter and cool in the summer as well as just encourage me to save more junk. I've also grown accustomed to not using a clothes dryer or dishwasher. All those eco-friendly lifestyle changes people are forcing themselves into back home are "am there, doing that" for me.

Sometimes I wonder if there is appreciably more I could give up if circumstances compelled me to do so. I'm sure that people who devote their lives to helping in areas without technology would think that I have "too much" even at the level I'm at now. I'm not quite prepared to give up my computer or Internet connectivity, though I sometimes think it might be a good idea to try...at least for a little while.

Taking the Next Step

It's that time of year in Tokyo again. When it's been hot for a month or so and it rarely gets lower than the mid 70's (mid 20's if you're talking Celsius) at night and the water never cools down. By late July, even the "cold" water from the tap is running warm. In fact, when I soak salad greens in the spinner, the water heats them up so much that I either have to throw ice in there or pre-wash and bag them to re-cool my now somewhat wilted greens in the refrigerator.

Taking showers becomes especially difficult around this point in summer. Even at the lowest heat setting, the water comes out incredibly hot, but cold water is not warm enough in which to comfortably shower though, honestly, in past years both my CH and I have opted for the feeling of taking a frigid camp shower over cooking ourselves. Getting overheated in a hot shower then stepping out into a hot room is not only bad for the spirit, but also the body.

This year, we're choosing a new path because of environmental concerns. I always do my best to reduce energy consumption to save money. I'm the person who turns off a light every time she leaves a room and suffers the heat sometimes to the point of feeling heat exhausted in order to "save the planet". Mind you, I doubt I'm contributing much as I'm sure for every person like me, there are hundreds who don't give a toss and figure that mankind will either soil its nest to the point of extinction or science will save us. However, I think it's important to live your life as much as possible thinking that the world would be better off if everyone did what you did rather than focusing on the fact that everyone isn't going to do what you do. Otherwise, you're just talking yourself into living by your convenience rather than your ethics.

The next step lately in trying to be more environmentally conscious has been to reduce shower water use and heating time by turning off the shower while I soap up or shampoo and to turn it on for rinsing. It's a good method, though feels quite troublesome at first. After you get used to it though, it doesn't feel like much of a sacrifice. If you're opting for this method to save energy (and it will reduce your gas or electricity bill and save you money if nothing else), I recommend filling a basin of water in the shower for re-wetting your soap or washcloth so you don't have to turn the water back on while you lather up. In fact, I recommend you don't use a washcloth but invest in a good quality synthetic mesh bath puff. They last forever (and can easily be tossed in the washing machine) and they can hold a lot more lather and soap than other implements. To give you some idea of how long a good puff will last, I got one free a long time ago with some body soap I bought and I've used it now for 12 years without any visible wear or staining. It's still snowy white and in perfect condition.

This method is actually relatively old-fashioned in Japan. People used to use buckets of water to rinse themselves after a soaping up outside the bath in public baths. As more homes got private baths and hot water in every room, things have changed to a more wasteful method. However, I've read that a lot of Japanese people are trying to turn off the water as much as possible in the shower and I'm hoping more Western folks do as well. Ironically, the Western style of bathing by soaking in "dirty water" essentially accomplishes similar water saving. If you wash in the tub, then rinse off with the shower afterward, it's almost certainly just as good with no worse a result.

Unfortunately, while this is all great in the summer, it's going to be very hard to do in the winter in a poorly insulated apartment with no heating in the bath or even in the room adjacent to it. I'll try to tough it out, but there may be a return to full on showers in the winter.