tokyo | Wendy Welch: Books, Yarn, Cats, Opioids

Japan is famed for its toilets. Shop windows that sell these proofs of superior culture even have little signs up in English: Sorry, we don’t ship internationally.

Because when you visit Japan, you will begin to think about installing one of these bowels and whistles machines when you get back home, trust me.

It starts in a cold airport arrival, jetlagged and confused. You stop at a toilet on the way to customs, and –what’s this? The seat is HEATED?!

Lust begins there and will build through the rest of your trip. As you sit doing what is necessary, woozy from plane sleep and international travel, music begins. Or the sounds of a soft flowing waterfall.

Japanese toilets have sensors. If you, ehm, drop a load, they start covering the activity with pleasant noises. There’s a button on the toilet marked “privacy” should you choose to work manually knowing you will deliver a physical payload.

Amidst the same row of buttons you will find something that looks like a woman sitting on a geyser. That’s for cleaning up after the payload. Another button is marked “shower” and that’s for general cleanliness. The geyser button is targeted to crevice clean. And baby, it leaves no corner unexamined.

Which is essential, because Japanese toilet paper is thinner than the alibis of a cheating spouse. That stuff won’t take crap from anyone. You need to learn to use the geyser; the faster you accept this and move on, the faster the person pounding on your stall door can get in. Because you’ve probably fallen asleep in this comfy stall, equipped with its own sink for hand sanitizing, the aforementioned heated seat, and those soothing sounds–plus a baby seat for moms. Plunk your kid down, then plunk yourself down.

Those sinks are amazing things. Sometimes the spigot is atop the tank of the toilet, because the water refilling the toilet tanks pumps clean. This freaks visitors out at first: it feels so unsanitary! Which is what the Japanese people are thinking about the foreigners: why won’t they use the provided sinks; what have they got against handwashing?!

Simple enough: gender neutral toilets use all the symbols

Amidst these high tech rows of buttons and lights and sink choices, one will find squatter toilets. India has a high population presence in Japan, and when you walk into a public restroom, at least one “stoop and sluice” squatter toilet offers no bells, no whistles, just a handle to put water into the hole instead of a bucket. The hole is toilet shaped and porcelain lined, but squatters is squatters and you can tell who drew the losing straw in the toilet line by the faces of the women waiting, who realize they are going into the squatter. Sometimes women offer the next person in line their spot at these. If an Indian woman is in line, she’s going to be offered a pass to the head.

Then there are the signs. One says please don’t stand on the toilet seats in English, Gujarat, and Japanese. Most are pictographs, and can be open to interpretation. I never did figure out what two people facing each other meant. “This toilet available for meetings?”

Overall though, it’s not hard to be a proper toilet visitor, once you master a few simple rules:

Use the water features to clean and the toilet paper to dry, or you’re going to regret it. Wash your hands in whatever sink the stall provides.
Do not throw trash away in the sanitary pad disposal. Trash is a whole thing in Japan; no public trash cans, and signs everywhere saying “If you didn’t buy it here, don’t throw it away here.” Pack a trash bag with you.
Carry a drying towel. Per this reduce trash rule, Japan does not provide paper towels in for drying hands, and often doesn’t have air blowers either. Pack a small washcloth with you, or buy one as souvenir. These are sold everywhere with every possible character and design on them, because the locals are carrying them as part of their daily lives.
Put the toilet seat down after flushing. (I once had an attendant stop me as I was leaving, check the stall, then beam at me. She hadn’t expected me to know to put the seat down. This elderly woman literally patted my hand as she indicated I could go–and with her blessing.)
And whatever you do, don’t make a scatological noise without the noisemaker on. Do yourself a favor and start it when you sit down. As the waterfall and birdsong floats into your ears, and the heat of the seat works its way into what is often the fleshiest part of female anatomy, relax and enjoy it. They’re not called rest rooms without good reason.

Kenrokuan Gardens are in Kanazawa, and they are quite something. I enjoyed them, but Amelia was having a mystical experience. After her first trip to Japan a couple of years ago, she built a Shinto garden at her Airbnb–which is her maternal grandmother’s old house, modernized for visitors–and we do believe she has the only Tori gate and Inari shrine in Elk Creek, Virginia. (Inari is the white fox who guards rice, and therefore prosperity and possibility.)

A kind couple at the bewildering array of bus stops at Kanazawa station helped us to the right bus and were very sweet in helping us get off it properly, as they were headed to the gardens themselves. The gardens are free if you’re over 65, so Amelia’s happy day started early. I had to pay 500 yen (which is a little over $3).

Plum trees blossom in snow. I did not know this until I saw them with my own phone camera! The gardens are famous for that era of rapid transition in Japan, when feudal lords (samurai) were on the way out and modern Japan as a power to be reckoned with in manufacturing and goods was hoving into view.

Of course, the samurai didn’t like this, and many of them were wiped out around the same time as the American Civil War in an ill-fated rebellion. It was shortly after this that samurai were forbidden to carry swords as part of their daily attire. (I am ignoring the implications to open carry in my home commonwealth of Virginia and moving on, thank you.)

The gardens are named Roku because of Japan’s six prized landscaping elements incorporated in their design: open spaces, panoramic views, solitude options, art made by humans, ancientness, and lots of water features. One of Japan’s oldest trees (a pine) sits in the garden. Amelia’s aunt sat on the tree seventy years ago to take her bridal picture, but it’s roped off now. One too many tourists, probably.

Amelia walked around in a daze, every turn and corner a new epiphany. I am a cheerful but not accomplished gardener, so I walked around going “Oh, pretty” and “I wonder if this is edible or medicinal.” (Bad gardeners make good foragers.)

And of course we had to do the winter tea experience, because it was cute. This country invented cute. They do cute with elegance, cute with glitter, cute with dignity, cute with gravitas. Warning to visitors: DO NOT LAUGH when you see a businessman in a black suit and black cashmere coat carrying a black backpack with a dangling fuzzy bunny onto a train. This was our international incident #17 or so, we think. We’ve lost count.

Amelia sat in blissful silence, munching her bean paste snowman, matcha chocolate, and almond lantern cookie in deep contemplation. She’s planning her garden back home. I bit the head of my snowman and watched a fat raven work the crowd outside the window.

After the gardens we investigated the reconstructed castle walls, then wandered through town. The high tea Japanese style was charming, but not entirely filling, so we stopped at what can only be described as a Japanese tapas bar.

The owner was a very sweet woman, and I had an assortment of six dishes plus hot red wine. (That is a big thing here and one of the cultural imports I will be making at home. Hot red wine is delicious, not mulled, just heated.)

She had a small display of handmade jewelry all in the same pattern, a family crest. Her sister makes them. Amelia and I treated ourselves to earrings, and then headed for a neighborhood outdoor onsen. These communal baths use volcanic hot water with a lot of natural minerals in it, and they are awesome. International incident #18, I left my glasses in the washing room, so had to reenter it after the onsen, with my sweatshirt on. You don’t wear street clothes into the bathing area.

The onsen also shows something kind of gritty about human divides. In America, many Americans will avoid direct contact with Mexicans unthinkingly, or make assumptions about their cleanliness and such without overtly expressing why they decide not to sit there, eat that, talk to him or her.

In the onsens we have visited, if we go to the inside tub, the Japanese women who come in after us go to the outside, and vice versa. Once an older woman shot us a suspicious look and left. By contrast, at my first ever onsen, the only woman there spoke fluent English and welcomed me to the experience when she discovered this was my inaugural immersion.

The neighborhood onsen was sublime. The gardens were spiritual. So what better ending to such a meaningful day could there be than an Irish pub in the heart of Kanazawa at happy hour? Amelia had a curry pizza. I had sausages. The Olympics were on a massive screen TV, showing the Asian figure skaters. A good time was had by all.