Japan's famously high-tech toilets can frighten foreign visitors.Photo: AFP
.Kristie Kellahan is bowled over by the cutting-edge toilets in Japan
ERIKO, our very serious Tokyo guide, informs us we are approaching "very important place", the Imperial Palace. "Unfortunately for you, the Emperor is very busy today and cannot meet with you," she says.
Her disappointment that the leader of Japan, considered by many to have directly descended from gods, could not tear himself away to catch up over a cuppa with a bunch of raggle-taggle Aussies, dead-eyed and dehydrated from the overnight flight, is palpable. Instead we rub sleep from our eyes and feed silver yen into a vending machine to take our pick of beer, whisky, hot coffee in a can or a beverage intriguingly called Pocari Sweat.
Japan is an anthropologist's dream destination. Exquisitely beautiful geishas still promenade along the ritzy shopping streets of the Ginza on the arms of ageing Mafioso types, while teenage girls dressed like Gothic Barbies giggle in gaggles and take photos on mobile phones smaller than the length of my thumb. Nothing is ever what it seems to be here in the land of the rising sun.
It never ceases to amaze me that, on the one hand, Japanese contestants will willingly humiliate themselves on national television, dressing up as dummy-sucking babies and diving into vats of spag bol to win a hair straightener, but when it comes to delicate matters of daily ablutions, modesty is next to godliness. A simple trip to the loo turns me into a David Attenboroughesque observer, peering through the lens of curiosity at a culture that is entirely foreign.
I'm distracted from my pressing need to tinkle - damn that Pocari Sweat! - by the UFO that appears to have landed in my toilet cubicle at the Four Seasons Hotel in Tokyo.
Who needs an audience with the emperor? "Hello, God, can you hear me?" I'm tempted to bellow into the porcelain bowl, convinced that I too now have a direct-to-heaven telegraph here among the plethora of flashing lights, buzzing buttons and bewildering symbols that bejewel this throne. Some are translated for easy understanding by dumb foreigners.
"Powerful deodoriser" reads one obvious, and reassuring, label. A fleshy rounded "W" invites use of the bidet function. A symbol of the sun, when activated, delivers an instant surge of heat to the seat. Cases of overheating have been reported in the press, giving new meaning to "hot cross buns". A handy blow-dry function for the nether regions is a mere press of a button away.
I'm told there are even more newfangled versions available that can check your output for vitamin and mineral deficiency. Wowser.
My favourite feature though is a button bearing the symbol of a gust of wind. I press it and I'm blasted with the tones of a rushing waterfall and a chirping birds. I don't hear any wind, though, which, I gather, is the point.
There's only so much standing over a toilet bowl a gal can do, no matter how fascinating the equipment. Curiosity now sated and with plans to import these modern masterpieces to Australia, I sit down to attend to nature's call.
There's only one problem - among all the buttons, pumps and fancy levers, I can't find the flush.
Source: The Sun-Herald
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