Terry Touts Toto Toilets
Talk about influence! The first time I ever visited Japan I was fascinated by the toilets; not just the traditional “pit toilet” but the super-automated, high-tech Western toilets. My first encounter was pretty funny – not knowing how to work the complicated control panel I ended up spraying, flushing, douching, and blow drying all to a musical tune. To avoid this cultural embarrassment as well as others foreign to those of us not familiar with Japanese ways, I put together a talk for our guests; “Japan: Observations of a First Time Visitor.” In the talk I mention what I learned “the hard way” from eating rice properly to toilet technique.
After our first few stops in Japan, I was besieged by guests who had to tell me their toilet story and to share their pictures. I can only imagine what the locals must have thought; hundreds of tourists from this beautiful cruise ship come to Japan and what do they want to do? Take pictures of toilets! In this day and age of global contact who’s to say how this will one day be interpreted.