Dingle Speaks

The toilets in Japan are nothing short of amazing, heated toilet seats, inbuilt deodorisers, noise generators to disguise the fact that you are laying bum-spuds (something which shouldn’t come as a complete surprise to the casual observer who sees you going into a cubicle, whistling and carrying a newspaper) and a drinking fountain.  Yes, you heard me right, a drinking fountain!

Robotoilet – Turn on, Tune in, Drop out

Basically, when a gentleman is going for a “standing evacuation” you press one of the buttons on the side on the control panel and with a mechanical whirr a pipe appears and delivers a jet of fresh water straight to your mouth. Well, except in my case it was poorly set and delivered the water directly onto my chest, fortunately I was naked (calm down girls) so no great disaster. I noticed a pressure adjuster and with a few clicks was able to lift the jet towards my thirsty mouth. It was a tad warm for my liking but I guess that’s how the locals like it

Toilet Drinking Fountain

One thing I found a bit odd is that the toilet seat has to be down for the fountain to work, normally when I’m standing I’ll put the seat up so I don’t sprinkle it, bit of a design flaw if you ask me..

I was talking to a girl in the bar last night about this miracle of Japanese engineering, she was equally impressed, she described it as “an eloquent display of gaijin barbarism”, I’m not really sure what she mean’t but I can tell she was impressed.

Other stuff:

Japanesish View from my Hotel Room

Don’t Ask, it’s Probably “Bad for the Health” or Something

So I’m in Japan right now, it’s a strange place to get used to after China, the streets are spotless, the people next to me on the train are having a whispered conversation which I wouldn’t know was happening if I couldn’t see their lips moving, people line up on the platform in neat lines and wait for everyone to exit before they enter the train one by one and men pay large amounts of money just to talk to women.

Something typically Japanese happening in Japan (Nagoya to be exact) last night

My Chinese colleague doesn’t like the place, “it is TOO clean” he says, “it is not personal”, he can only smoke in certain areas and has to put the butt in the street ashtrays, this is “very inconvenient”.

One thing I really like out here is the road works, outside our office in Japan they’re fitting out a coffee shop, everything is boarded up and does not impinge on the pavement but they still employ two guys to stand at either end of the boarded up building to apologise profusely about the inconvenience and advise on how to best proceed past the works.

Apologising profusely to someone exiting the building

“Almost safe now, just a few more steps sir, you’re doing REALLY well!!”

Next to the road, leaning on the bollards, you can see two red batons, they normally use these to wave at passers-by and indicate the correct path to take. Actually there is a small blade inside each of these, if a pedestrian is too inconvenienced by the roadworks both streetworkers commit immediate ritual suicide to restore face.

Tomorrow – Japanese toilets

UPDATE:

Sushi!!! HAI !!!!

Surely these just all rattle against each other every time there’s an earthquake?

Hermetically sealed building work

Note the amount of effort to completely seal the work from the street, even the most minor gap is sealed up with tape and the boards have been perfectly cut around the steps. It’s pretty much watertight, If they get a water leak in there all the staff are basically going to drown.