Plastic bags and rear washers
A brief addendum to Jon's culinary experiences post. What he failed to mention is the quantity of food we are constantly ingesting. It's just so much fun to eat here that we do it at every opportunity, whether we are hungry or not. For instance, if we see a fun Japanese sweet shop where they have something we haven't tried before, we'll walk up and point at something and try it. If, 5 minutes down the road, we see something else unusual that strikes our fancy, we'll try that as well. Time for dinner you say? It's not a matter of being hungry, if it's time for dinner we'll go find something. We figure we may never make it back here so we might as well try everything we can while we can. In the span of one morning in Takayama, we had 2 sticks of riceball skewer things each, a Japanese marshmallow, more samples than you can shake a stick at, and that was before breakfast.
Allow me to also sing the praises of the Japanese toilet. It is truly a gratifying experience to use even the public bathrooms here. I would never dream of using the bathrooms in the San Francisco MUNI station even if they existed, but here, they are as clean as using the ones in your own home. Every toilet seat upon which I have placed my bum has been heated. I can only imagine the amount of electricity that is used up by each and every toilet in this country. Just to give you a list of tushy treatments I have come upon: heated seat, bum spray, bum wash, deodorizer, fake flushing noise, temperature adjustment, horoscope. Ok, so I made the last one up, but I wouldn't be surprised if it exists somewhere. In a chocolate cafe we went to, the toilet lid automatically goes up when you open the door, a truly hands free experience. In our hotel, there are actually instructions on how to use the toilet, its not just a flush and you're done. There is a little nozzle that shoots out warm water in a bidet like way. You can sit there all day and press buttons to see what will happen next. And, as if that weren't enough, in an eco-friendly way, you can even wash your hands in a makeshift sink built over where the pump part is behind the toilet. When you flush, water comes out of a regular spout, you wash your hands in that, then that water goes down to fill up the tank! It's wonderful, really. Japan is certainly one step above every other country in the cleanliness department. Jon has been yelled at in Japanese twice for not removing his shoes and/or slippers.
Oddly enough, I can't stop thinking about my mom throughout all of these germ-free trysts. I would like to publicly thank my mother, yes, you Sheryl, for teaching me that if you drop some water on the floor, someone will inevitably come across that water with their dirty shoes and make mud, and that mud will be tracked all over the house. This is how my obsession with cleanliness began and now I have Japan to thank for making my dream of cleanliness a reality.
On a different note, we've also noticed some interesting and ultimately disturbing inconsistencies. Such as the eco-friendly factor. This being the home of the Kyoto Treaty and the humble Prius, they aren't as aware as you would think. On the positive side, you see way more recycling containers than garbage cans and there's no excuse not to recycle. As a matter of fact, it's almost impossible to find a garbage can so on more than one occasion we ended up carrying our trash around with us all day. Also, everyone uses public transport here because the train system is so efficient and reliable. On the downside, the amount of packaging and plastic bags they use is utterly insane. Remember when Jon made fun of me in a blog post before we left about how I was writing down how to say "no thank you I don't need a bag" in Japanese? Turns out it's a good thing to know how to say, even if I don't remember how to say it. For example, we got some lunch in a deli type place the other day to take it to the park and have a picnic. Now, we were prepared for a plastic bag or two but what we found when we were unwrapping everything was crazy. The salad that was already in a plastic container was then wrapped in a thin plastic bag. Same thing with two other items. We were also given two plastic wrapped wet cloths for our hands. All this put into a paper bag, then that into a plastic bag. Another time Jon got a small mochi snack which was already individually wrapped, fits into the palm of your hand. The lady then started to wrap that in fancy tissue, until we stopped her, but she proceeded to put it into an oversized paper bag, then that into a big plastic bag, until we stopped her again. We simply can't get over it, and not in a San Francisco-save-the-world-earth-day kind of way. It just doesn't make sense. They love their styrofoam too. In a country that has robotic toilets, can't they devise an alternative to a product which even the U.S. doesn't use anymore?
We will both be very sad to leave because we have really started to figure out how things work here and there is always more food to try. Plus I don't think Jon has gotten a chance to use the bum washer function yet.
posted by Jon @ 5:12 AM
2 comments
