“In the night I made the beginner’s lavatory mistake. Whatever the style of Japanese lavatory–whether Western or the traditional hole in the floor–you never go into it wearing the same pair of slippers that you wear along the corridors. Another pair of slippers–often helpfully marked ‘lavatory’–is laid out for you there, and you change into them as you enter. The beginner’s lavatory mistake is this: stumbling half-pissed into a hole-in-the-floor-type lavatory at night, he kicks one of the lavatory slippers down the hole. This, I suppose, happens fairly regularly, but for a veteran of seven years to commit this blunder was an immediately sobering embarrassment. In fact, it was so embarrassing to be left hopping about in a single lavatory slipper that I kicked that down the hole to follow the first. My plan was to disclaim all knowledge of the slippers so that the maid would be accused of having forgotten to lay them out. This, I congratulated myself, was a cast-iron defense, but in the searing light of morning it struck me that I might well be resorting unawares to an instantly recognizable ‘beginner’s lavatory feeble ploy,’ so I avoided not only the downstairs guests but the entire domestic staff as well.”

(Alan Booth in The Roads to Sata p. 88)

Posted on July 14th, 2009 under Japan • Tags: alan booth, japanese toilet, toilets. • RSS 2.0 feed • Both comments and pings are currently closed