One line in the article I mentioned last week in particular that made me chuckle was the part where author brought up Japanese toilets:

Not only are toilet seats heated, but toilets universally include a bidet or a more general water spray from below — your choice.

He makes it sound as if all toilets here are a) Western, b) heated, and c) equipped with space-age ass-cleansing technology. If only that were the case. In reality, while many homes are equipped with modern Western-style toilets, when searching for a lavatory while out and about — especially in train stations, department stores and restaurants — the likelihood of encountering nothing but piss-stained, excrement-encrusted squat toilets is extremely high.

That was the case yesterday when I was out shopping in Shibuya. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say there’s nothing quite as unpleasant as trying to maintain balance and do one’s business whilst perched precariously with one’s pants around one’s ankles over a small hole in a slippery, urine-soaked floor. Sure, squatters aren’t unique to Japan, but I firmly believe that the moment we humans first progressed as a species was the day an ingenuitive caveman dug a hole in the ground, surrounded it with a couple of logs and sat down to drop his prehistoric load in comfort.

This has been around for ages, but click here to see an animated guide to using Japanese squat toilets.