One day last month, I learned something about myself. Apparently, when I get in the shower I keep my eyes closed for a while with my face up to the water nozzle with streaming over me. I did not realize I did that. This particular morning, after a soaking of many 10 seconds, I opened my eyes and screamed! There was coal black water gushing out of the shower head and I was coated with what looked like black ink head to toe. I had to try to clean myself up a bit before going downstairs to report this and have Ae, my landlord, check into this. But when I turned to the sink basin and turned on the spigot to try to wash myself off - more black ink! [Now I'm thinking of the X-Files black oil, episodes.] The only "clean" water was sitting in the toilet tank. I sacrificed a towel and wiped myself down a bit. 
When I got downstairs, I found out that this was happening everywhere in our guesthouse - apparently the charcoal filter broke in the water reservoir and Ae must have spent all day going around to each room, letting the taps run dry and working with the maid to clean up. [I wish I had taken a photo of me - it would rival the photo of the time I captured my cocker spaniel, Jenny, into the shower stall with me in So.Portland to wash her in tomato paste and juice to get rid of skunk smell. I was covered with what looked like blood - a scene right out of Pyscho.]When I got to the room at 8pm for the first time since I'd left that morning, I tiptoed back in hoping that the problem had been fixed (why I thought tiptoeing was in order, I'm not sure) and the bathroom was spotless again but I had no electricity - which I soon figured out had just been shut off while Ae was working in my room. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, Shiaki, the Japanese woman across the hall, let me use her shower to clean up that morning as she had already had her bathroom fixed and it was no longer spouting "oil, that is, black gold, Texas tea...
