Chlotilde, as you know it is a guessing game. We can only give clues. You won this week, now you need to be patient and wait and see if anyone can guess last week's location. The Women of Knowledge have suggested another clue, so here it is. Someone looked far into the future and gave us all a chance to do some palm reading here.
When I visited Japan several years ago, one of the things that both shocked and amazed me, was the bizarre toilets that they have over there. The weird toilets came in one of two categories 1) old fashioned, Japanese"squat" toilets and 2) ultra futuristic western style "washlet" toilets.
A "Squat" toilet basically looks like a urinal, laid on its back, mounted on the ground ... kind of like a small bathtub, about 2 feet long by ten inches wide. There is no seat to sit on, so the way you use these toilets is to squat over them and then let your doody drop into the trough.
This works pretty good for peeing (at least for girls), but I couldn't imagine taking a dump on one of those things ... I need to sit and think or read for a while before I can have really satisfying results.
The "Futuristic" washlet toilets are like something out of Star Trek. My husband's family has this toilet that has a built-in electric seat warmer, a built in radio, a little nozzle that squirts water to wash your thingy (like a bidet) from 4 different directions, and a built in hot air dryer that blows warm air to dry off your rear after the washing. The toilet is controlled by a keypad on an arm next to the seat, and the whole thing is computer programmable.
For example, if you know that you get up at 6:00 every morning and you don't like to sit on a cold toilet seat, you can program the toilet to warm up the seat to a specific temperature at 6 am, so you can park your bottom on a warm toilet seat.
The controls (except the flush handle obviously) were all in Japanese, so I was experimenting and pushing buttons without knowing what they did, and the toilet actually "talked" too. You'd push a button, and a polite, female pre-recorded voice would respond in Japanese.
As a woman, I believe this system ingeniously mimics the everyday practice of going to the toilet together and chatting at the same time, but of course without the nuisance odours.
Well Melanie, thank you for your extraordinary tales from Japan. By coincidence I have been reading about Japanese toilets myself. In "In Praise of Shadows" Junichiro Tanizaki says:
"Every time I am shown to an old, dimly lit, and, I would add, impeccably clean toilet in a Nara or Kyoto temple, I am impressed with the singular virtues of Japanese architecture. The parlor may have its charms, but the Japanese toilet truly is a place of spiritual repose...No words can describe that sensation as one sits in the dim light, basking in the faint glow reflected from the shoji, lost in meditation or gazing out at the garden. The novelist Natsume Soseki counted his morning trips to the toilet a great pleasure, 'a physiological delight' he called it. And surely there could be no better place to savor this pleasure than a Japanese toilet where, surrounded by tranquil walls and finely grained wood, one looks out upon blue skies and green leaves."
5 comments:
OK madame von B,
please tell uz where is the toilet for guys and girls, eh?
Chlotilde, as you know it is a guessing game. We can only give clues. You won this week, now you need to be patient and wait and see if anyone can guess last week's location.
The Women of Knowledge have suggested another clue, so here it is.
Someone looked far into the future and gave us all a chance to do some palm reading here.
Kew Gardens
When I visited Japan several years ago, one of the things that both shocked and amazed me, was the bizarre toilets that they have over there. The weird toilets came in one of two categories 1) old fashioned, Japanese"squat" toilets and 2) ultra futuristic western style "washlet" toilets.
A "Squat" toilet basically looks like a urinal, laid on its back, mounted on the ground ... kind of like a small bathtub, about 2 feet long by ten inches wide. There is no seat to sit on, so the way you use these toilets is to squat over them and then let your doody drop into the trough.
This works pretty good for peeing (at least for girls), but I couldn't imagine taking a dump on one of those things ... I need to sit and think or read for a while before I can have really satisfying results.
The "Futuristic" washlet toilets are like something out of Star Trek. My husband's family has this toilet that has a built-in electric seat warmer, a built in radio, a little nozzle that squirts water to wash your thingy (like a bidet) from 4 different directions, and a built in hot air dryer that blows warm air to dry off your rear after the washing. The toilet is controlled by a keypad on an arm next to the seat, and the whole thing is computer programmable.
For example, if you know that you get up at 6:00 every morning and you don't like to sit on a cold toilet seat, you can program the toilet to warm up the seat to a specific temperature at 6 am, so you can park your bottom on a warm toilet seat.
The controls (except the flush handle obviously) were all in Japanese, so I was experimenting and pushing buttons without knowing what they did, and the toilet actually "talked" too. You'd push a button, and a polite, female pre-recorded voice would respond in Japanese.
As a woman, I believe this system ingeniously mimics the everyday practice of going to the toilet together and chatting at the same time, but of course without the nuisance odours.
Well Melanie, thank you for your extraordinary tales from Japan. By coincidence I have been reading about Japanese toilets myself. In "In Praise of Shadows" Junichiro Tanizaki says:
"Every time I am shown to an old, dimly lit, and, I would add, impeccably clean toilet in a Nara or Kyoto temple, I am impressed with the singular virtues of Japanese architecture. The parlor may have its charms, but the Japanese toilet truly is a place of spiritual repose...No words can describe that sensation as one sits in the dim light, basking in the faint glow reflected from the shoji, lost in meditation or gazing out at the garden. The novelist Natsume Soseki counted his morning trips to the toilet a great pleasure, 'a physiological delight' he called it. And surely there could be no better place to savor this pleasure than a Japanese toilet where, surrounded by tranquil walls and finely grained wood, one looks out upon blue skies and green leaves."
No worries about dumping there then.
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