A bit of a bunny trail, here.

Reading in the bathtub isn’t high on my list, to be clear. Mostly I step into that tub you saw, the one with the green shampoo bottle sitting on the rim, only to tend to the plants at the window. Go upstairs right now and you’ll find, down in the bottom where you’re supposed to sit, ugly brown-tipped leaves I unceremoniously ripped from their spider mothers, plus a pile of excised, pathetic fronds from the potted fern.

I’m too driven, I guess. The shower downstairs seems the easier, speedier place to jump into and wash off the world.

The tubs in Japan—the ones I remember—positively forbade any such get-down-to-business do-what-you-came-for approach. An elephantine one in a hotel, wooden, the chest-deep water idling in wait. And in Akiko’s parents’ home, the tub just as much at the ready but modern. In a small laminate-walled room, its tiled floor outfitted with a drain, after you soaped all over in front of the mirror and hosed yourself off (no worries about where the water flew), you hung the nozzle end of the hose back on the hook and clambered into the jetted bath. They kept it filled nearly to the brim. From one day to the next the tub held the same water, thermostat controlled, programmed for warmer in the evenings. The accordion-pleated lid prevented any toddlers from falling in.

(And in the toilet room, more like a closet, tiny winking lights signified the different functions of the commode—the bidet feature, the water-saver flush, the what-all-else. I never figured it out. But that’s another topic.)

To be cont’d.