Cold Showers

I stopped using hot water last April with the goal of making it until I left for my trip home in October. That last week at the beginning of October was starting to get a bit chilly during my morning showers, but I prevailed. Now I am back, and the water is pretty cold. A bit too cold. But I realized that I don't even know how the hot water works at my new (recall I moved in June) apartment. It's an on-demand water heater, as most in Japan are, but I couldn't get it to work.

Yesteraday I asked my supervisor and he sent a maintenance guy right away. I was curious how he was going to solve it so I watched as he tried all sorts of ideas (ideas I'd already tried) then settled on opening up a pipe and removing some sort of filter. Whatever the reasoning was, it worked! (But now I feel guilty for using hot water and the fossil fuel that is heating it.)