Letters from Japan: Aug 25, 2002 "Flushing, Fashion, and Fat-Free-Folks"

Original Subject Line: "Not to be read by weak stomached-people"

Hi Kids,

Can I just start off by bitching about all this damn smoke!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't even sit and enjoy writing you because EVERYONE in Japan SMOKES. And there aren't too many places that don't allow it. I guess that explains the brown and yellow gunky teeth. I will try to be quick about this because if I don't, I might die.

First, let me tell you about the bathroom experience. My first day at work, I got there 3 hours early to prepare (yes, I am a nerd). When it came to be potty-time, I asked Karin where the bathrooms were. She gave me these long, complicated directions, then finished off with, "And they are Japanese style toilets." Now I have heard tales about these toilets but I had not actually seen one yet, I just knew that I wasn't going to like it. But off I went in search of the great Japanese toilet. When I got down to the right floor (yes, my floor does not have its own bathroom), I wound around a few corners and there it was. This thing was probably the next step up on the evolutionary scale of toilets. Although it was not a dirt hole in the ground, it was pretty damn close. Picture a dirt hole filled with porcelin (sp?) and a flusher. Notice I mentioned nothing of a toilet seat. Now picture yourself straddling the hole and squatting with your pants pulled down low enough that you can free the necessary part, but not too low because if you don't have great aim, well, you can figure out the rest. Now throw into the mix the fact that my bathroom door would not stay closed and there was no main bathroom door to the whole john (so passers-by could see in) and you have the ingredients for a horrifying bathroom experience. I'll never be able to pee again.　Now compared to the toilets at Virgin Records, it was even more of a cryin' shame. The bathrooms there have a bunch of buttons along the right-hand side. And one of those buttons actually SIMULATES the sound of a toilet flushing. Now I don't know if the purpose of that is for noise distraction or to help people pee (much like running the bathroom faucet) but I found that to be hilarious. Two of the other buttons made me chuckle as well. One said "bidet" (in case you are against wiping) and the other just had a picture that looked like a wide double-you (W) which ended up being a symbol of a butt with water squirting up from below (again, in case you got something against a simple wipe). This toilet did it all. It had a few other buttons but I was not about to find out what they would do to me. I miss my Virgin Records hangout. I.P. Freely there. But one thing I DON'T miss about Shinjuku is the sporadic power-blows of hot stench. You can be walking along and be stopped dead in your tracks from the smell of sewage. I think they must pump it through pipes beneath the streets every half hour or so. If a smell could ever make you forget what you were just thinking, this is it. It literally hits you like a brick wall and you can't think straight for a minute. I have never smelled a dead person before but I imagine that this is the closest thing there is to the smell.

On a different note, I have made another observation about Japanese girls. I have been noticing that many of them are pigeon-toed or their knees bend in towards the center of their body when they walk instead of bending out. I also noticed that they all wear shoes with 1 to 2 inch heals and they have great difficulty walking in them. It's like one of those riddles of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Do they walk knock-kneed because they can't walk in these little spiked heals or do they walk funny in spiked heals because they are knock-kneed? It's just one of those things that I have noticed so often that I can't stop noticing and I begin to wonder.

Well, my second day of work was another good day. I was the only girl there today but the boys learned quickly that I can hold my own so I was not the butt of any jokes. The job is fairly easy if you don't stick to the script. They have a method that they want you to use but I stray from that a bit because in my experience, it confuses people (me, in particular). But as I have said before, it is fun having students that actually WANT to learn. Yesterday, I had a Japanese man who worked for Phizer and he had traveled to the U.S. a lot on business. Since it was just the two of us, I just let him talk instead of going through a lesson. He told me about this diet he was on (this man only weighed 140 pounds to begin with). People here have this obsession with getting fat. Have I told you that I saw my VERY FIRST fat Japanese person 3 days ago? There really are NO overweight people here. Probably because they all smoke. But anyway, he was really cute, he told me he was on a diet because he was getting fat so now he only eats one meal a day and he doesn't eat any rice and in 5 days, he has lost 5 pounds. Oh, they have commercials, too, for weight-loss and even though they are in Japanese, I was watching one commercial and it had a before and after picture of one girl and it was NUTS. I thought the before-picture was the after-picture until they showed the after picture. People are obsessed with weight here so much that even skinny girls are "fat." The girl didn't even have any cheese curd on her butt, let alone even HAVING a butt! I thought American people had a distorted body image, but this place takes it to a whole new level.

OK, now I am just beginning to ramble. What you should walk away with is:

1. Japanese toilets suck.

2. Short, spiked heals are all the rage in Japan and may cause disfigurement in young girls.

3. Japanese people are obsessed with body image when they SHOULD be obsessed with brushing and flossing.

Write soon, Love Rachel