The Road Less Traveled » General

Japanese Toilets

Rintaun — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 15:15:01 +0000

I haven’t written anything in a while now… I haven’t forgotten to, it’s just that nothing beyond the ordinary has really happened recently. Just daily life and nonstop, extremely exhausting study. In a normal week, I study kanji alone for at least ten or twelve hours, not counting ANY time spent in class.

But that’s entirely different from what I’m actually writing about today. My topic is something much closer to ALL our hearts: toilets. In Japan, there are primarily two types of toilets, and if you took a hint from nearly everything else in Japan and guessed Japanese-style and Western-style, then you’d be absolutely right.

“But how can this be,” you may be wondering… “A toilet is a toilet!” And that is where you would be wrong. The situation is actually a bit more complex than simply Western- and Japanese-style toilets, but I’ll begin by explaining the differences between these two major types.

Pretty self-explanatory... right?

One thing Japan got right when they named Western-style toilets “Western-style” is that they are, much to my relief, essentially the same in nearly every way to actual American toilets. Which is a relief. Japanese-style toilets, however, are entirely different. The picture to the left is, of course, a Japanese-style toilet. It’s pretty self-explanatory, right? If you’re having problems visualizing exactly how you’re supposed to use this toilet, I’ll tell you that Japanese-style toilets are also known as “squat toilets”. I hope that clears up any confusion; yes, it’s as bad as you feared.

Fortunately, pretty much everywhere that has Japanese-style toilets also has Western-style, though in some homes (such as the homes we’ll be doing our homestays in later on), they only have the Japanese-style. But as of yet, I have not had cause to use one of these toilets.

Are those buttons?

I’ll move on, I guess. I mentioned that the Japanese actually got Western-style toilets right, and mostly, that was true, but it needs a bit of qualification. Even when Japan gets something right, they tend to change it to make it better (at least, better in their way of thinking…). So you end up with toilets like the one to the right… Yeah, it’s pretty much a normal toilet in every way, except that it has… buttons? Whatever could you need buttons for?

It’s not exactly the most comfortable subject to talk about, so I’ll go quickly. Pressing those buttons starts and stops a spray of warm water. Yes, Japan has quite the penchant for making things better… I’ll leave the rest to your imagination, but I’m sure you’ll be able to figure it out without too much trouble. I will say, though, that like any too-curious-for-his-own-good foreigner in Japan, I have pressed those buttons. It was rather… surprising.

Anyway, that’s pretty much all for now. I’m pretty much exhausted beyond belief, so I’m going to go to bed (it just hit 12:15am here). Enjoy the nightmares you’ll get from reading this!

Cellphones

Rintaun — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:06:53 +0000

So yesterday did not go at all as planned. Well, at least according to my plan. I’m sure it went right according to plan for some people. In any case, this, of course, means that I’m not going to be writing about food like I said I was going to be, but instead I’m going to write about something that took way too much time and was extremely exhausting: getting a cellphone.

The good news is that I did get a cellphone. It’s actually pretty nice. Not only does it have a camera on the back like normal phones, but you can press a button while in camera mode to switch to another camera on the screen facing you to make it easier to take pictures of yourself. It works surprisingly well.

A QR code linking to the BBC's website.

Another thing that I like about the phone is that you can, if you want to, input in Japanese also. I guess this is a given for a Japanese phone, but to me this is a plus. Another odd feature that the phone has is a barcode reader. It can read normal barcodes like those on products, but this is actually not the general usage. It’s genrally used for reading square barcodes, which can encode longer sets of data, like urls and such. These are actually called QR codes, and they’re much more common in Japan than America… you know, since their cellphones can read them.

Another great thing is that we ended up getting a number of awesome discounts… meaning that while we had to buy our phones, our base rates for the actual plan ended up being 0￥. The only things that will raise this are making calls to non-Softbank phones and making calls to Softbank phones between 9pm and 1am. Yes, that’s a measly four hours. Oh, and sending e-mail messages.

Speaking of which, Japanese cellphones don’t generally use SMS, or text messages as we know them in the States. Instead, they use fully-fledged e-mail messages. From my phone, I can both send and receive e-mail messages from and to any e-mail address, including other cellphone e-mail addresses.

“So,” you say, “this is all good… what’s the problem?” Well, the problem is that we got to the Softbank store (the place we got the phone and the cellphone plan) at about 10:45am. We got our cellphones, however, at about, oh, 6pm. Yes, that’s seven hours later. “But that’s absurd!” Yes, yes, I know.

An what were we doing that entire time? We were waiting. Luckily the people at Softbank actually told us that it was going to take about that long, so we didn’t have to wait there. And also luckily, there was a nearby mall not too far away. Unfortunately, everything in Japanese malls is ridiculously expensive. Well, not everything, but suffice it to say that the tiny round change purse that I bought in Takashimaya (a 13-story department store [read: mall] in Nagoya) cost me ten dollars, and it was the cheapest in the lot.

So that meant browsing the mall for seven hours. Well, whatever… as they say in Japanese, shou ga nai (trans: it can’t be helped). So we finally got our phones, great!

Well, then me and Mike (and then two other people, John and James) decided to walk home instead of taking the bus. This was… probably a stupid decision. We were at a place called Chuu-ou-dai, which is SEVERAL miles away. And by several I mean at least 4 or 5.　So it took quite a while, and we had to hurry in any case because we had to be back to the dorm for dinner before 7:30pm. This didn’t quite happen, but we made it back only about 5 minutes late.

So it was a really, really long day, but I can say that there were two definite benefits to it all: 1) I got a cellphone. That’s rather handy. And 2) I slept extremely well last night.

That’s all for now. I think I’m going to stop making promises about what the next post is about, because something always comes up and it always turns into a lie. Sorry about that.

So I promised…

Rintaun — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 23:17:15 +0000

So I promised to take pictures of my food, and I finally remembered to actually do so. For breakfast this morning we had scrambled eggs (they put ketchup on MINE for some reason…), some kind of rice, miso soup, a couple little side things, and, you guessed it… cabbage salad. Anyway, here’s the picture:

Well, that’s one promise down. My other was that this post would be about the people we’ve met. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of them, so I can’t really fulfill that one quite yet. Instead, here are a couple pictures from yesterday. The first one is me on my way to the welcoming ceremony. The other is a “fun” picture taken of all the study abroad students after the ceremony. I’m in the top right, and you can’t really see me because I’m behind a couple other people… :/

Pictures

Rintaun — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:43:31 +0000

So I’ve been requested to explain the unexplained pictures that I posted the other day… so here goes!

This is a picture of a bunch of other OU people standing outside the dorm; from left to right, they are Daniel Johnson, my roommate, Michael Marion, and Jonathan (Ike) Hurst. This was Tuesday morning as we waited outside the dorm to go to the placement test.

This is a chunk of the dorm building with the sky behind it… nothing really special, I guess.

This is a tree outside the dorm… it has a bunch of strange fruit on it and spiders everywhere.

The aforementioned spiders. They’re pretty big (you can tell because the picture of them is actually somewhat clear!). These spiders are ALL OVER campus, with huge webs in pretty much every bush and tree.

A sign by the entrance to the dorm building. It says “Chubu Daigaku Gakusei Ryou”, which translates to “Chubu University Student Dormitory”.

This is the fingerprint security system. Between 9pm and 12am, we have to use fingerprints to get into the building. Before that, the door is just open, and after that, we are completely locked out. We registered our fingerprints in the office on Tuesday night.

This is the view over Kasugai from the hill upon which Chubu University sits. If you continue down the road this was taken from, you get to the entrance to Chubu, and if you keep going, you go right down into town. This was taken on our way to the placement test.

This is another picture on the way to the placement test, but into the Chubu University campus. The sign you see far in the background is a Japanese speed limit sign, in kph.

Me sitting with the (rather creepy) Ronald McDonald statue (whom the Japanese just call Donald) sitting outside the McDonald’s in the International Plaza, where the Center for International Programs is located.

Mark bought this… “drink” out of one of the vending machines. He quickly found out that it’s not a drink, but jelly in a can. Mmm-mm.

A sign outside of the tea house on campus, which we haven’t been to yet, but which looks freaking sweet. Don’t bother asking me to translate it, because I have no clue what it says!

This is the underside of some bridge on campus we went under…. I don’t really remember where it is, but it looked pretty cool.

This is a scarecrow on the way to the Supermarket, 100￥ store, and drugstore, all of which are in an area about 15 minutes walking from the university. The crops surrounding it are called “ine” (pronounced ee-neigh), from which you get rice. Or at least this is how it was explained to me by our friend Takuya.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I don’t think I’ve really taken any other pictures yet, but I’ll try to get back into tourist mode. XD

I’m finally here.

Rintaun — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:45:14 +0000

So I’m in Japan. We got here last night about 6pm local time (that’s 5am EST), and got to Chubu University at about 8pm. By the time we got into the dorms and everything, it was pm, and I was in bed by 11. I didn’t sleep on the flight so that I wouldn’t be jet lagged. This strategy actually seems to have worked a bit… hopefully it stays that way. Anyway, as I write this post, I still don’t have internet access. I have to register my computer for access, or something, here in the next few days. There are computers upstairs in the lounge which I can use, though, so hopefully I’ll be able to post this before I have access on my laptop.

In any case, everything seems to be going well so far. It’s about 6:45 am as I write this. I’ve been up since about 5:30am, but that’s not too bad, right? Breakfast, if I recall correctly, begins at 7:30am, and at 9:15am, I have my placement test for what level of class I’ll be in. Fun stuff, right? I wish they could’ve put it at least another day later or something… Whatever, I guess. It shouldn’t be too bad.

So my schedule for the day looks something like this:

9:15am – 12:00pm : Placement Test
1:30pm – 3:00pm : Campus Tour
5:30pm – 6:00pm : Dormitory Fingerprint Registration

I don’t know what we’ll be doing in the off times (probably eating), but that’s all that’s scheduled for today. Tomorrow I have interviews (the final part of the placement test) and orientation for the university.

The rest of the week looks pretty similar. Then next week, on monday, classes start. Yay for that. In any case, that’s about all for now. I’ll post more as it happens. Oh yeah, here’s some pictures of my dorm… (The comforter on my bed, by the way, is awesomely comfortable. I love it)

Insomnia and Jet Lag: Outlook… Positive?

Rintaun — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 08:12:56 +0000

So I originally thought this jokingly, but I’m beginning to agree more and more with this (originally) insincere idea.

I get hit hard by insomnia occasionally (such as tonight and the past couple days), and so my sleep schedule often gets rather screwed up rather quickly. Recently I’ve been sleeping between like 5am and 1pm or 8am and 4pm or so, give or take depending on the day. But then I thought, “Heck, this is perfect! Once I get to Japan, it’ll be 13 hours different, and I’ll be on a PERFECT schedule.”

Of course, I was joking… but now, as I lie in bed trying to sleep (for the past 3 hours), I’ve been becoming more and more resigned to the idea that since I’m only going to be in the States for another, now, 3 days… I may as well just accept that I’m not going to get any sleep at any decent time and just live with it so that I can be on a “normal” schedule immediately upon my arrival to Japan.

Of course, I’m a bit pessimistic about the whole thing, as well. I’m not entirely convinced, given my luck and my previous track record, that as soon as I get to Japan, my sleep schedule won’t flip around again to match what it currently is in my insomnia-plagued state. What do you call that, anyway, reverse jet lag? Who knows…

Anyway, here in a few minutes, I guess I’ll just close my eyes and pray for sleep. Who knows, I might even get it.

But before that, as a side note, I’ve been reading the (rather few) blogs for other people from OU going to Japan, and Ike Hurst’s most recent entry, Notes on a small town, made me realize… I never actually turned in a topic for my elementary school presentation. Woops. I should probably mention that to somebody, sometime, to figure out what I should do about it, but whatever. I’m sure if it’s gone this long, it can’t be that much of a problem… can it?

Meh, could be worse, I guess. I could be awake at 4am writing a blog post about it.

…

Wait, what?

5 days? Nonsense!

Rintaun — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:00:26 +0000

As of this moment, it is almost exactly five days until I will board my first flight from Pittsburgh to Detroit; after that, it’s a mere 3 hours until I’m on my way to Japan. This, to me, is nonsense. It doesn’t register properly in my brain, and I have no clue what to think about it, really. So for the moment I’m just passively accepting it and moving on with my life for the moment. I haven’t even started packing yet. Does that make me crazy? Maybe. Do I care? Not really.

Right now, I am helping my mother babysit my twin nephews. They were born August 1st, so they’re just over a month old… It’s kinda upsetting to me that when I next see them, they will be just over a YEAR old.

Anyway, I’ll probably pack late Saturday night… that sounds like something I’d do. In the mean time, I may update again, I may not… who knows. Honestly, I don’t think much is going to change between now and when I leave…

Before our story begins…

Rintaun — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:36:50 +0000

So, blogging about your trip seems to be the thing to do, and I’m told that I have to keep my frienda and family updated on every tiny little detail of my life in Japan. Well, honestly, that’s probably not going to happen, but whatever. In any case, I am planning on keeping a blog, and updating it relatively often. Whether or not this will last beyond the first day, week, or month… who knows.

I’ve said it again and again that it really hasn’t hit me that I’m going to be in Japan for a year, away from my friends and family, and until yesterday, it’s been true. Yesterday, though, we had a going away party, and it hit me quite a bit as everyone slowly trickled out and finally it was just me, alone. It was a bit depressing, really, realizing that in a week, they would all be thousands of miles away.

That said, I am still looking forward to going. I’ve said many times that going to Japan is both awesome and horrible. I know I’m going to have a great time, but I also know I’m going to miss everyone back here in the USA. I’m not nervous or excited, really, but I am a bit depressed, which is problematic because this is the time when I need to be getting things done.

More later (hopefully).