In the United States (or anywhere else for that matter) I’ve often been in the kitchen preparing breakfast when I suddenly realize that what I really want is a nice bath. Then, I quickly realize that I am in the kitchen, and the bath tub was in the bath room, so in order for me to achieve my goal, I would have to walk all the way to the tub, turn on the water, wait for it to heat up to an appropriate temperature, then allow the tub to fill … but not too far and return to the kitchen to eat something (because now I realize that I am starving) and then slip into the tub and enjoy my bath.
In Japan, the situation is quite different. In Japan, you can fill up your bath tub directly from the kitchen. Not only can you fill it up, but you can also determine precisely what temperature you would like your water to be at, precision to 1°C. Furthermore, no need to worry about the tub overflowing, because you simply select the volume of water that you’d like to put in the tub, within 1L. I can see this being very useful.
Obviously I am overreacting just a little bit, but I think that it’s actually a pretty good concept, one that we should consider importing to the US. The real reason for this key pad is that there is no hot water unless you flip the switch and turn the water heater on. This is a particularly interesting idea for someone like me, who will only need the hot water for about 30 min per day … Ultimately, it will save me a lot of ¥ on the gas and electricity bills, but more importantly I am not wasting energy keeping a pool of water hot that I might not use for days.
The water heats up pretty quickly, within a minute or two of when you turn it on, but you have a lot of control over the temperature. This is very helpful once you determine what you want for a bath / shower temp. Also, if you are just washing some dishes, there is no need to make it as hot.
At any rate, this was an interesting discovery, and one that I plan to make a lot of use out of.
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