by Anna Kunnecke
On train station platforms, in convenience stores, in the clusters of vending machines on every corner--I love the fact that in Tokyo you're rarely more than a 30-second dash from PET bottled liquid refreshment. In the winter, I buy the hot green teas and warm my freezing fingers. I slip them into my coat pockets and pop them into the nifty insulating covers that they give away (hello marketers, I'm your gal). In the summer I press the cool bottles to my wrists, my temples; I cling to them on sticky steamy sweaty trains as I loop my way through the city; I'm tempted to just pour the water directly onto my miserable, overheated self. (I usually resist.) In mid-August when the vending machines can't keep up with the heat and the drinks come out of the chute lukewarm, I actually want to cry.
I know that PET bottles are terrible for the environment. I applaud the companies who make the new bottles that you can crunch into an eco-friendly twist, a perky little candy wrapper of trash, a tiny twizzle of pollution. (Unfortunately, the thin plastic tends to crackle and rustle, something that's not useful in a sound booth, and I returned to my regularly programmed water when working. But I digress.) I am mostly amazed by people who carry around those terribly hip cylindrical steel flasks. How noble! How good for Mother Earth! I rejoiced when an evolved friend gave one to my daughter. We took it to the park, smug in our eco-chic halo. Five minutes on the swings and we were both thirsty. We emptied it in about ten seconds. So after you swill your beverage, where do you fill it up again? From the taps in the bathrooms in Tokyo station? I don't think so.
Visitors to Japan exclaim over the incredible quality of the tap water. It is safe, clean, tasty. There is just one problem. It smells like chlorine, and sometimes during rainy season, like the sea. Add to that the fact that my family lives in the shadow of an enormous incinerator tower, and we arrived at a solution that works for us: we bought a water distiller. It's scary what I clean out of the bottom of that at the end of every month. To be fair, if I were to distill the expensive water that comes from some exotic and mineral-laden stream, I'd probably have to clear it out with a shovel.
It's generally acknowledged that tap water is scrutinized much more closely than bottled, and public water is tested and held to a much higher standard than anything sold with a plastic cap. There is also a persistent urban legend that the plastics in PET bottles leach nasty things into the liquids we drink. Nonetheless, I find myself standing in front of a vending machine dreamily contemplating the choices. When I need to use my voice for work, I chug water. When Ihm just getting through the day, it's green or jasmine tea. I'm partial to pretty packaging, myself, which might seem ridiculous considering that however lovely the label, I'm holding in my hands a piece of pollution. I am sorry. I plead guilty.
Also, dehydrated.
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