Japan: You Can Tell a Lot From a Toilet

On Toilets

Stereotypes usually exist for a reason and I think Japan’s toilets just go to prove what people already assume about the Japanese: They are technological, orderly, smart, patient, and demure.

Japanese toilets are varied, ubiquitous, and complicated. They range from your standard “Asian squatter” to the “Porcelain Computer,” which takes longer to program than to piss in. The computer version comes with a control panel on the side which allows you to heat the seat, squirt water, and make funny noises among other things. The range of toilets shows the Japanese’s Asian roots and the distance they have come as a technological nation. The ever-presence of toilets is both cause and effect for Japan’s order and cleanliness. (It’s hard to be organized or clean when people are forced to pee on the street). Their complexity is yet another example that the Japanese are constantly looking for ways to challenge themselves intellectually, even in the bathroom.

Meanwhile, due to the complexity, the patience required to use a computer toilet in Japan says a lot about the Japanese psyche. When I have to spend more than 30 seconds figuring out what the button with the little pink butt is or how to stop the toilet seat heater from burning my ass, I get annoyed. From the land of road rage and fast food drive-throughs, I seriously doubt my countrymen would put up with this either.

As has been said about the culture before, the Japanese are also more demure than Americans (with the possible exception of some of my college roommates who would have loved this next invention). That is my explanation for why Japanese toilets have a flushing noise that you can turn on to mask the sounds that you are making in the bathroom. The “fake flush” button doesn’t actually flush the toilet, just makes a similar noise so that you can do your business without embarrassment. Would have saved you a few trips to the basement bathrooms in the dorm, hey girls?

On Being Cute

Beyond having an impressive array of toilets, I also think it is worth noting that Japan is extremely cute. First, the people there seem to think that other people can actually speak Japanese! Unlike my village in Peru, where people were legitimately not aware of other languages, the Japanese are a pretty educated group. Probably educated enough to surmise that a 5’9’’ Caucasian girl doesn’t speak very good Japanese. Despite this, policemen and 7-Eleven clerks had an especially long list of things to tell me. I would always nod politely and smile but I am still wondering what in the hell they were telling me.

Other cute things that Japanese people do include riding bikes while holding umbrellas, putting on slippers to go to the bathroom, wearing really weird outfits, and eating like they will once again see food in the foreseeable future. On this last note, my friend Jackie and I did all Americans proud at an All-You-Can-Eat conveyor belt Sushi restaurant in Osaka (you pull off as many plates of sushi as you want as they roll by). The all-you-can-eat price for women was somewhere around $18 (it was higher for men) and judging from the number of plates in front of Japanese women at the restaurant (I’d say an average of 7), this was probably a reasonable price. However, in an event that still causes my heart to swell with pride, Jackie and I honorably downed over 25 plates of sushi each. Being ill was a small price to pay for the ability to claim such a victory.

On Why Japan’s the Best

Besides impressive toilet facilities and a squeezable cuteness, the Japanese offer a lot of great options for tourists. Some of the highlights include Onsens, food, taxi cabs, and street signs. Onsens are bath houses with a number of pools of varying temperatures to clean yourself and relax in. They are perfect for a cold day or if you just feel like hanging out in a room with 20 other naked people. As for the food, it was the best I have eaten in the entire world. And now that I have been to 41 countries, I think that is a substantial claim. Try sushi at the fish market in Tokyo right after it comes off of the boat and eat Okanamiyaki which is a pancake-like omelet full of vegetables and meat that you cook yourself at your table. Speaking of food, feel free to eat it off of the floor of your taxi cab. Cleaner than your hotel sheets in Vietnam, taxi cabs also come with polite drivers and meters. And you actually know where they are going because streets are, gasp, clearly marked.

On Why It May Not Be For Long

As much as I love Japan, if they don’t start making babies, there aren’t going to be any of them left. Unfortunately, they might be too prude to do that. While in Kyoto my friends and I visited a trendy night club where the entertainment kicked off with a lounge band and finished with a DJ. Throw in a bit of alcohol, and any respectable Latin American night club would have already produced enough action to necessitate a few weddings in the next month. Not in Kyoto. But then again, how could you really put the moves on when you are all facing the same direction, looking at the DJ, and swaying to rap music by yourself? Talk about cultural birth control.

While in Japan I visited Hiroshima, Osaka, Nara, Kyoto, Tokyo, and the little known town of Atsumi-Onsen. Here’s a short synapses on each of them:

Hiroshima

My first trans-Japanese stop was in Hiroshima, made famous by its unfortunate status as the first city to have an atomic bomb dropped on it. The first place I visited was the A-bomb museum. Strangely, 24 hours prior to this visit, I had been perusing the Siloso Fort Museum in Singapore, in part dedicated to remembering the atrocities wreaked by the Japanese who invaded the Malay Peninsula during WWII. Once again, it appears that the bad guys are usually those who didn’t get to write the museum blurbs. In Singapore, the experiences of WWII included a scathing report of a brutal Japanese invasion and occupation. And while the atomic bomb museum did not deny any of these events, they were relegated to a single short sentence mentioning a minor foray into the Malay Peninsula, along with a passing comment noting that Japan had been a bit “unpeaceful” during WWII. (I suppose that is why the Chinese are still mad at you?). But despite the bias, the destruction wreaked by the atomic bomb was no doubt real, devastating, and horrific.

It would be comparably pleasant to think that the atomic bomb just killed a lot of people. In truth, people at the epicenter were mercifully vaporized, while those nearby were mutilated and tended to stay alive for long enough to reach home, see their families, and then die in excruciating pain, usually from horribly burned skin and damaged organs. Visuals of skin melting off of people’s bodies and skin that had been burned black, along with first hand accounts of people who watched their family members die while begging for water, were heart breaking and sickening. Many other people died in the weeks to come from the radiation, and many died years later from related cancers.

The museum leaves you wondering, was it better to drop a bomb to stop the war even though it killed thousands of Japanese civilians? Or would it have been better to sacrifice thousands of American and European military men, including our great uncles and grandpas, who were on the verge of shipping out to a virtual slaughter to attack Japan and Japanese-occupied South East Asia by land? I don’t think these are ever very easy questions to answer. The most you can hope is that the people we’ve elected into office are smart enough to make these tough decisions. Oh…shit.

Apart from its historical significance, I found the city of Hiroshima to be little more than a concrete jungle. This is likely because everything was built after 1945. Right outside of Hiroshima I visited the island of Miyajima, home to the Itsukushima Shrine and the famous Torii Gate, one of the most photographed sites in Japan. It was my first introduction to Japanese shrines and the over-use of wood, which I got a heck of a lot more of when I continued on my journey.

Osaka, Kyoto, Nara

Honestly, these three towns are a blur of temples, Zen Buddhism gardens, shrines, castles, old Japanese farm houses, an aquarium, some pagodas, conveyor belt sushi restaurants, and sake tasting. My pictures do them more justice than I ever could in words.

Tokyo

First, I would like thank my Hilton Honors American Express Card and a hectic work travel schedule last summer which allowed my friends and I to stay in the $485 a night Conrad Hilton in downtown Tokyo. I would also like to thank the Conrad for their slightly stupid slogan of “giving you the freedom to be yourself” which is surely why they politely looked the other way as we doubled the amount of people that were supposed to stay in the room and trekked through the lobby with oversized, smelly backpacks.

During my 24 hours in Tokyo I visited a number of different neighborhoods. I went from the red light district to the high-end shopping district of Ginza to the American night club district of Roppongi (which was oddly full of black ex-military Americans working as bouncers). The city was clean, the people were well dressed, there were lots of neon signs. No surprises there.

But the experience that blew me away was the Tsukiji Fish Market, the largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world that opens in the wee hours of the morning. I arrived at the fish market at 5am and wandered along the stalls full of fresh seafood that had just been brought off of the boats. In the freezer room, I saw tuna that fit into boxes the size of coffins and would set you back as much as a small car. Small restaurants along the perimeter of the market sell fresh sushi, and for $35 a plate at 6 am you can eat the best sushi of your life for breakfast. This only leaves you feeling mildly ill for the rest of the day.

Atsumi-Onsen

My main reason for traveling to Japan was to visit my friend Riley who I met while in the Peace Corps. In the 5 years that we have known each other, Riley and I have never actually met on American soil. Riley was in the JET (Japanese English Teaching) Program and teaching English to kids in his small Japanese town. At a height of 6’ 4” with long blonde hair, he was also probably terrifying them.

The train from Tokyo to Atsumi-Onsen heads straight north for about 4 hours and passes through bright green farm land nudged up against grey mountains that run down the center of the country. In the rainy season, which I believe runs from January to December, the dark sky and low clouds give the countryside a very cozy feel. Riley’s 12,000 person town is equally quaint. Atsumi-Onsen literally means “Hot Water Hot Springs” and their town mascot is the ever-intimidating Mighty Radish. Yes, their mascot is a radish. And there is a huge purple radish on top of a 20 foot high pedestal in the middle of town in case you forget.

Atsumi-Onsen sits right on the ocean and all of the close-together houses have their own little gardens. The rural quietness of Atsumi-Onsen is a side of Japan that you rarely hear about. And, although small, Riley’s town does offer the conveniences of a bakery, a 7-Eleven, a foot onsen, and a tatami making factory. A foot onsen is a hot tub for your feet. You can sit and drink tea while soaking your tired treads in some warm water. Tatami mats are the straw mats that cover the floor in Japanese homes.

As if I haven’t made a big enough deal about how good the food is in Japan, I must mention one of my best meals in Japan was at I’s house, a friend of Riley’s. Her house is right on the ocean and her kitchen and living room windows look out across the sea, which she seemed to think is pretty normal. She served us sweet tofu stuffed with rice and noodles, hand rolls that we could fill with all sorts of vegetables and raw fish, raw tofu, and a spinach, egg, and sugar mix. It is no wonder that I liked Japan so much.

On Leaving

Alas, all good food orgies must come to an end, and thus I must take my leave of Japan. I took the night train from the town of the Mighty Radish and headed into the heart of Tokyo and on to the Narita airport. While Japan has made a name for itself in timeliness and efficiency, Malaysia Airlines seems to have slipped into the country undetected. Because they are incapable of calculating and hedging fuel costs, they arbitrarily decided to charge all passengers extra, on top of their ticket price, for fuel. Of course they wouldn’t have competitive prices if they did this up front, so they try and charge you extra when you are checking in at the counter. So, after a slight tantrum on my part and some re-booking I spent the next 12 hours at the Tokyo airport waiting for a flight on Northwest Airlines. With my faith in South East Asia no longer intact, I returned to the land of noodles and Buddhism for a month long tour of Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Bangkok.