Doing what comes naturally

The one thing everyone who'd been to Japan warned us about was the, uh, traditional toilets. Many public bathrooms in Tokyo offer a choice -- some stalls have Western toilets, and others have Japanese. The Japanese ones are kind of a trough built low into the floor -- to use them you have to kind of hunch over them. When you get out into the more rural areas and at spots less geared for tourists, Japanese toilets are more the standard, it seemed.

I'll share perhaps more than you wanted to know and tell you that I only used a Japanese-style one once, and that on my first try, I managed to fall over. And then I walked out and discovered that there was a Western-style toilet in the stall one door down. But hey, at least I, uh, added a new experience into my repertoire.

The really bad photo shown here is the sign that appeared on one of the Japanese-style stalls at Hello Kitty land, a.k.a. Sanrio Puroland (which will soon be an entry all its own). Apparently the toilet is about to be used by a LEGO minifig. Toilet and person are not actual size. Toilet is not actually a giant slipper.