Surviving in Japan. Lesson 2: Change and constancy (or, How Japan shows it’s integration into Western culture and, at the same time, its continued adherance to tradition by taking a look at its bathrooms)

If you’re in the country you’re going to have to at some point; it’s inevitable. They’re similar, but they’re certainly not the same. Let’s take a look at how they are different and how you can deal with the inevitability if you make the decision to visit Japan.

Let’s start with the stalls, the lovely stalls. I haven’t tried to check the women’s bathrooms because I don’t want to be beat to death by an old, and very likely short, Japanese woman (ergo, ladies, you’re on your own).

Anyways, the Japanese have their customs; and Japanese customs die as softly and swiftly as I glide across the heavens, meaning they don’t die, ever. The Japanese bathroom is a perfectly good example of this. Below is a picture of one type of a Japanese bathroom stall. This type of stall is bare-bones, like so many other things in Japan. No bidets, no heated toilet seats, no sinks at the top of the bowl. This is how you know that Japan never westernized, they easternized western culture and technology. There are bathrooms that have automatic soap dispensers, automatic sinks, and automatic dryers and yet still have this type of stall. For your viewing pleasure, I give you bathroom simplicity.

This is where the past lies, in the bathroom.

There it is. If you go into a bathroom and there’s only one stall, just leave, it’s the older style. Are there any other differences in the Japanese bathroom besides the traditional toilet? Of course, I just mentioned one above: automatic soap dispensers, which are exactly what you would expect. Another difference is that you might not have a dryer. Some places do, some don’t. This is when it’s a really good idea to have a handkerchief. For those that have anemia and chronic memory loss, the other differences are the electronic bidet and the heated toilet seat, which were mentioned in the second post to this blog.

So that’s a quick look at the bathrooms of Japan. They can be a hassle sometimes, but they’re really not that bad. The lack of predictability certainly makes things more interesting.

This isn’t a very long post, but you have to give me a break, because it’s about bathrooms. Do you really want me to write 1000 words on this subject?