The World is NOT a toilet!

I have lived here for just over two months now. One might think that things would start to get boring, or regular. I assure they are still anything but, I still walk around in a near constant state of awe and amazement, and I am really not sure that that will ever go away.

Part of the reason I am so intrigued and confused is that things are so different, people are so interesting, and I struggle to read and understand what is going on around me. Some of the differences are small and insignificant, others are large and earth shattering. Some are just downright irritating.

In the two months that I have lived here I have seen 5 men (boys) take a leak in the middle of some hugely public area. Five!!! I think, honestly, that that may be more than I saw in my past five years living in America, and I have only been here two months!

The first was a taxi driver on the streets of Tokyo. The second was a drunk man in Nagoya. He was just walking down the sidewalk with hundreds of other people enjoying night life in the big city, when he decided he needed to use it, so he unzipped, right there, and let loose. The third and fourth were men out taking walks along the cycling road. This is a bike trail used by cyclists, runners and walkers. I ride it everyday to and from work. The fifth was a small boy in a neighborhood. He and some friends were playing baseball, when all of a sudden he set his glove and ball on the ground, pulled down his pants, and peed. Right there in the middle of the road.

None of these incidences occurred in far off, rural areas where proper facilities would be difficult, if not impossible, to find (after all, sometimes emergencies do happen). Each of these individuals were surrounded by any multitude of options. Not only could they have found a toilet, with relative ease. They could have also, at the very least, ducked behind a bush or building to make an effort to conceal what they were doing. But they didn’t, why is that?

I must say that this is one cultural difference that I do not care for at all.

Posted on Saturday, October 6th, 2007 at 12:20 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “The World is NOT a toilet!”

  1. Danielle,

    Here in Mexico there is often an older lady sitting outside of the public restrooms and as you enter you are supposed to give her anywhere from two to four pesos. She will hand you a few sheets of toilet paper. If you don’t need the toilet paper for one thing you can always use it to dry your hands after you wash because often there isn’t any other means to do so. In return for the little bit of income derived after sitting there all day the woman is supposed to keep the restroom clean. More often than not they will enter the men’s room unannounced to sweep the floor while there are men standing at the urinal doing their thing and no one seems to care. I can assure you that it took me a long time to get used to this. Urinating alongside the road or behind a tree is no big thing either. Taxi drivers do it all the time. In the U.S. you might get arrested for indecent exposure but not here. I have seen older women in rural areas just squat down wherever they are to pee. It is all invisible because of their long skirts but after they move from that “spot” you realize what has just happened in front of your eyes. Quite shocking. My friends in China tell me that many of the young children wear pants that are split in the back and they wear no underwear so all the parent has to do is hold them over a trash container and let them do their thing. Have you seen any of that yet? Be forewarned 🙂

  2. Your "Mom" says:

    Remind me to tell you a story about “disposing of a hazardous waste in a service plaza on the Ohio Turnpike” sometime.

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