10 fun stories from Japan – A miniseries: The Toilet Story

by The Flamingo

Dear reader, you already know what big fans we are about all things Japan. The Flamingo wrote a 10 stories miniseries about funny/awkward/eccentric experiences that can only occur in Japan. I will share with you some more or less embarrassing moments that happened during the trips there, that always make top conversation topics.

4. The toilet story

This happens to a lot of tourists in Japan. Not only are the Japanese toilets very complicated, with a lot of buttons, with only kanji written on most of them, they are also dangerous, with water squirting at you from different angles, taking you totally by surprise. The difficult problem is finding yourself not knowing which is the right button for flushing. The toilet being as dangerous as it is, you’re nervous in pressing any of the unknown buttons.

Both The Fox and The Flamingo found themselves in the most embarrassing of situations…running through the bathroom, chin down, red with shame, hoping no one will notice how we left the toilet without flushing. That was not the most difficult part of the problem of going to the toilet.

To go to the toilet in a small, two street Japanese village is definitely a challenge and more complicated than going to one in a mall (of course they have public bathrooms even in the forests, this is not Europe). Going to the guys’ bathroom instead of the women’s was a common mistake of mine, because I sometimes confused the kanji. Going to the right toilet eventually but literally not knowing how to use it was really embarrassing. Flushing was the least of my problems. It was so weird, a mixture between a Turkish toilet and something else, something unknown, with lots of suspicious handles. It freaked me out so much, I left without using it.

Well, you don’t get an instruction manual with all the different toilets when going to Japan, so mistakes are inevitable. The Japanese find us Western tourists pretty stupid and that’s why they have tolerance for us. You don’t need to ask yourself why, since we don’t even know how to use a toilet properly!

Photo by Amy Reed on Unsplash