Kyoto snippet – toilets

Both in our rental house and in public restrooms, using the toilet is distinctly Japanese.  In most department stores or other pubic restrooms, you walk in to see a toilet with a full bidet panel (front, back, water pressure, volume to drown out noisy business, etc.) and instructions for sanitizing the seat (seriously).  Basically, you are instructed (with pictures) to take some toilet paper, squirt some cleaner from a dispenser on a wall, wipe down the seat, and place it in the toilet when you are done. 

We also have a bidet in the house.  Dina loves it and Adrienne has learned that you have to actually sit all the way back on the seat to actually have it be even remotely effective. 

This the panel next to the toilet in our house.

Our initial experimentation with bidets has lead to some serious giggling in bathrooms.  For example, today Dina could not find the flusher in a public restroom because she could not read the Japanese instructions. 

We’re baaaack.

We are going to change things a bit.  Our very long blog hiatus is due in part to intermittent internet, but a larger part of it is sorting through the 1,000s of photos from safari.  We felt a compulsion to go through everything sequentially, which meant no blogs until we’d sorted all the photos.  We have given up on this goal.  From here on out, you will see small snippets of our time in Kyoto mixed in with our slow documentation of not only safari, but a wonderful four weeks in Turkey. 

Thanks for your patience and we’ll be updating far more frequently now that we are slowly settling in Japan.