Photo/Illutration The main entrance of Tokyo Sewerage Museum “Rainbow.” Visitors can learn about sewer mechanisms and the importance of water. (Photo by Lisa Vogt)

I spend a lot of time at my villa in the boonies and being a city person, sewage matters never crossed my mind.

It was only after I purchased the property that I found out it was not connected to a central sewage processing facility. Instead, a personal sewage purification tank underground has to be regularly cleaned by a professional. 

When I told my father about it, he said, “Oh, a honey bucket truck! I remember back when I was growing up ...” and he told me stories about noise, flies and the stench. Fortunately, such services have evolved, and the truck that services my villa is quiet, clean and odorless.

Modern central sewage is a marvel. My eyes were opened to a wonderous world beneath our feet at the Tokyo Sewerage Museum.

At the museum, you can flush a toilet and see water and waste flowing through transparent pipes from a house that links to other pipes connected to nearby buildings and ultimately a processing facility.

I knew Japan has many beautifully designed maintenance hole covers, but now I know a lot more. Have you ever thought about why the cover is round? If it were a square or triangle, it could fall into the hole!

Tokyo maintenance holes have four numbers on them, corresponding to the cover’s ID and construction date. Next time, take a good look at one and see if there’s a blue symbol on it. If so, it can be used to set up a temporary toilet in an emergency such as an earthquake.

An oversized chair with a toilet seat is placed atop the maintenance hole and housed in a compact square tent. It’s disaster preparedness at its best!

When the sewage makes it through all the pipes and finally reaches the water reclamation center, the wastewater is cleaned. I had thought chemicals were used, but it turns out that’s not the case. Microorganisms are put into the water and mixed.

They move around eating the pollutants or forming tiny sludge solids by attaching themselves to the pollutants.

The heavy sludge solids sink to the bottom, and clear water appears above the sediments. It’s the same mechanism in the natural world--microorganisms live in rivers and clean the water. Seeing videos of our microscopic friends doing their work was riveting!

We owe our everyday lives to workings that we cannot easily see.

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This article by Lisa Vogt, a Washington-born and Tokyo-based photographer, originally appeared in the Nov. 15 issue of Asahi Weekly. It is part of the series "Lisa’s In and Around Tokyo," which depicts the capital and its surroundings through the perspective of the author, a professor at Meiji University.

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