Okay, it is time to talk toilets. I have been avoiding the subject because, well, it isn’t necessarily the most polite topic of conversation. But remembering the toilet I saw at the shrine in Kamakura over the weekend, I feel obligated to expose the truth. Not all toilets in Japan are models of Japanese engineers’ superior technological expertise and ingenuity. There is not a Captain Kirk toilet in every house and public restroom stall. In fact, only in the finest hotels and the VIP lounge of the airport will you find a gleaming porcelain bowl crowned with a heated seat and fanny washer. In the majority of locations, you will be lucky to even encounter the porcelain bowl. By American standards, the traditional Japanese bathroom is quite crude. While there does seem to be running water in every restroom, a true Japanese toilet is less comfortable to use than a good ol’ American outhouse.The first thing you notice when walking into a public restroom is the fact that the stall doors run floor to ceiling. Most doors also have a red-colored plate that lets you know when the stall is occupied, which I originally thought was just a clever accessory. Only after thinking about the American way of determining if a stall is occupied—looking under the door for feet—and realizing it wouldn’t be feet you’d see in a Japanese bathroom if you looked under the door, did I understand that the full-length doors and colored plates were necessary equipment to protect privacy, not added conveniences. If you are extremely lucky, you will find one of these full-length doors sporting a picture of a Western toilet. If the call of nature isn’t a frantic scream at this point, I highly recommend waiting until this stall is vacant. If you can’t hold it another moment (or if your husband is waiting impatiently for you to emerge from the ladies’ room), you’re going to have to suck it up and go Japanese-style.
IMPORTANT!! When you walk in the stall, immediately check for toilet paper!! Only recently has this item been added to many Japanese bathrooms—if there is none, dig a tissue out of your purse before you hang it on the stall door hook. (When you walk down the streets of Japan, there are always salespeople shoving small packs of tissues at you. It doesn’t matter whether the hawker is advertising cell phones or exotic dancers. Take the tissues! They are worth their weight in gold.)
Forget about reading a magazine or answering the cell phone while you’re in here. Unless you have the thigh muscles of a Major League baseball catcher, you won’t have the stamina for extracurricular activities while in the bathroom. You don’t sit on a Japanese toilet…you squat above it. (Now do you understand the full-length doors?) The toilet is basically a porcelain trough in the floor. The front end has a hood and the pipes—make sure you face this direction! Some bathrooms even have special tiles on the floor to help you find the correct placement for your feet, so that everything will line up properly. The hard part is figuring out how to arrange your clothing so nothing gets dirty. While you want to pull your pants down as far as possible so you don’t accidentally dribble on them, you don’t want them puddling on the floor around your ankles, because I don’t think that’s water you’re standing in. You must also be mindful of long shirt tails and coat tails hanging below the waist—hold them up out of the splash zone. With your hands full of clothing, you have no means of maintaining your balance as you lower yourself into a squatting position over the toilet, so you'll want to descend slowly and carefully, making no sudden movements. Not that there is anything to grab onto anyway if you begin to lose your balance—you’d have to make a split-second decision about which would be the most sanitary thing to touch on your way down…the wall, the floor, the hood of the toilet, or the trash bin, if one is present. Shudder. Check out this website for full instructions on how to use a Japanese toilet (warning: there is an explicit description of what happens if you lose your balance, so hide the kids’ eyes). Please note that the author actually meant toilet bowl not bowel, even though the error adds to the hilarity of the whole experience.
After you emerge from the stall, you are going to have a strong desire to wash your hands (if not take a shower). At the sinks you are going to find plenty of running water—often from faucets of the motion-sensor variety—but oddly you won’t often find soap. This is so strange to me, in a country that is hyper-aware of spreading germs (during cold season, scores of Japanese wear surgical masks so as not to contaminate the rest of the population). Even rarer than soap are paper towels or electric hand dryers. You are expected to have a small towel with you at all times with which to dry your hands, wipe sweat from your brow, mop up spilled coffee, etc.
I used my first Japanese toilet at Ueno Zoo several weeks ago. It took longer than a normal pit stop should have, but I emerged feeling quite proud of myself. My jeans and my sneakers were dry, I didn’t have to grab onto anything to keep my balance, and I had my little towel with me to dry my hands when I was finished. I felt like a potty expert! It was only when we arrived at the train station and I pulled my PASMO card (train pass) out of my back pocket that I realized I might need some more practice. In the process of squatting over my strategically pulled-down jeans, I squashed the daylights out of my PASMO card—quite an accomplishment since it is made of the same plastic as a credit card. It still works in the scanner, but the creases will constantly remind me not to overlook any small detail in a public restroom!
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