In The Library

In a fit of madness my Senior sent me as cultural attaché from The Island to the Larger Island up north. (I was duped - I thought it was to share my Dwight Yoakam and Johnny Cash collection with the Japanese ... but it turned out to be for a work project).

There are so many sights and sounds to share from the land of the rising sum, er sun. But I’ll have to set aside those areas on which I’m really not entitled to comment:
- Fashion (Ugg Boots and Short Shorts anyone?)
- Music (J-Pop anyone? How about “Bump of Chicken” or “Chatmonkey”?)
- Food (I spent the entire time in an Irish pub, occasionally venturing out to McDonald’s)

So moving on to topics on which I feel I’m licensed sufficiently to comment ... let’s talk about Size.

In the trailer park where I grew up (Hey Jeb!), we spent our time making everything as big as possible: guitar noise, meals, trucks, houses and of course – hooters. But clearly on the Larger Island miniaturization of all things mechanical is the strong suit of their culture. Heck they can make a work van that looks smaller than the stroller we had for our kid.

Of course we less-cultured Westerners have tried our hands at the shrinky thing. And to give you an idea of how good we are at it, well you just have to watch that tremendous Top Gear segment on the Peel P50.

We’d better stick to making stuff big.


And on the only other topic on which I feel sufficiently licensed to comment, I can’t help noticing that one of the few items that is not miniaturized in Nippon: the facilities in The Library (for those not familiar with the terminology refer to the reference material that I prepared earlier).

Make no mistake, they have certainly added technology and otherwise made it incredibly complicated. I’ve never seen a Dunny with more buttons than my remote control (all five of them). And that button with the fountain symbol next to it just seems to compel your index finger ... well, I won’t spoil it for those yet to experience Nipponese Toilet Tech.

The Can in my hotel had a detachable remote.

I’m still puzzled. (I mean there have been times when I’ve wished I could be outside the Small Room as I flushed ... but that’s another Latrine story for another time.)

Mind you, I was a little disappointed that my Lav didn't come with a hostie.


But there was one Loo (in a restaurant in Chinatown of all places) that has truly embraced the iTart technology of today – it had a touch screen. As I was rather lit from a couple (few) Asahi and Sapporo beverages, I was eagerly testing all of the cute applets and images on the screen to see what would happen at the porcelain side ... until my inner O.C.D. Clean Freak swam past the Nagano hops and politely tapped on the front of my consciousness: Bathroom. Toilet. Touch screen. Blech.