Japanese Hygiene and My Friend, Paul

My good friend Paul is in Japan for business right now and he has been sending out emails to keep everyone informed of his travels and experiences. I wish I could adequately describe Paul's sense of humor for you but let's just say that more often than not his wife winces when he makes a joke. Nevertheless, what Paul has provided in this little update is worth sharing with a larger audience and so, with his permission, I share with you.

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Look, I feel like we’ve been doing this long enough that I owe you a well-rounded report on my experiences here, so I made full use of the toilet this morning. The Japanese are a very hygienic people, often bathing multiple times each day. And apparently this commitment to cleanliness extends to their nether regions.

These toilets and I had been eyeing each other warily for a couple days now, so I decided to try them out this morning – before showering, when I could afford to make a potential mess. Both commodes in the two hotels I’ve visited so far have a set of controls along the side. There’s a button for Stop, a button for Spray (with a depiction of water spraying a bum), a button for Bidet (more water spraying but this time a human silhouette sitting on a toilet replaces the curvy cheeks) and a Water Pressure knob (+/-).

I already knew these toilets were an interactive experience because the first time I sat down water started running into the bowl. I hopped up to make sure nothing bad was happening, but it was functioning properly and I’m now used to it. The other functions, however, were as yet untested.

Feeling chicken, I shut the lid and stood there over the toilet while pressing the Spray button to see what would happen. But either I couldn’t tell from the noise or it doesn’t work without human weight on it. So I sat down and pressed Spray. A little water ran, a mechanism sound was made, then a few seconds of silence preceded a sudden jet of water from below and behind that poked me with remarkable and uncomfortable precision. If you were standing outside the bathroom door, you would have heard immediate thrashing and shouting as I stabbed at the Stop button.

But after calming down, I began to get curious. Did this intimate finger of water (calling it a Spray is some kind of creepy joke) continue for a preprogrammed amount of time? Is it something you get used to and eventually prefer as an alternative to toilet paper? So I gritted my teeth and hit Spray again. The water, the sound, the silence, and then the jet started and I began counting seconds (OK, they were fast seconds). I was rocking back and forth in tears by the time I got to 20 and pressed Stop. That little bugger knows just exactly where to hit you for maximum discomfort… and the water gets progressively warmer, which only adds to the weirdness. I decided 1) it would run as long as I let it, and 2) I’d stick with toilet paper.

That left the Bidet function. I’d committed to trying this thing but I sat there a good five minutes psyching myself up. Eventually I figured that I may as well get it over with, so I squeezed my legs together to make as tight a seal as possible, expecting some type of upward explosion beneath me, and pressed Bidet.

The water, the sound, the silence (which at this point left me with the same feeling you have before the ride drops at Six Flags)… but no explosion. Instead, a second jet from below on the front side hit me with the increasingly-warmer water. But this one missed just slightly the target area, which was far less intrusive. I sat there in relief for a few seconds (even turned the water pressure up and down), turned it off, stood up and realized I’d have to use toilet paper after all just to dry off my backside.