One last thing…

For Christmas last year I got given Sudoku toilet paper. It’s useless. You can only fill it in with number ones and number twos.

…That was recently voted as the UK’s BEST toilet joke...hmmm…..It’s good, but I preferred the runner up…

Did you hear about the film Constipated? It never came out.

…possibly because I can relate to it more, but that’s another story.

My final post on Japan, has to be an entire post dedicated to the quite frankly exquisit art of Japanese toiletry. It is probably weird to say that the toilets were one of my favourite things about Japan, but bear in mind that I make this statement on the back of 6 months in SE Asia where I once used a public toilet that had no lock on the door and required me to pee like a man into a gutter with a giant sh*t in it. I had also paid for the privilege. I also think they somewhat epitomise the absurdity of some of Japan’s crazy culture of technology and convenience, so here it is.

Public toilets in Japan take the peeing experience to a whole other level! Each one (even in the excuse-the-pun ‘crappy’ toilets) is accompanied by what I like to call a Control Panel….comme ca…

(apologies for poor photo-it's tricky taking a photo subtly in a toilet...if only there was an option to play music to cover the shutter sound...oh wait!..)

 These buttons between them allow you to…heat up the seat, vibrate the seat, squirt water up your lady bits, squirt water up your back bits, play bird songs to mask sounds (!!), spray deodorant to mask smells, and one of the buggers flushes the damn thing!

The thing is…I can’t read Japanese, so this invariably takes me about 10 minutes, evokes giant queues, and leaves me feeling like I’ve had a rather stressful mini break in the world’s smallest spa (although with undoubtedly fresher botty bits!).

It was only in the last (yes the LAST) toilet I visited in the airport in Tokyo just before I left, that I found a convenient wall-chart explaining everything to me. Thanks Japan.