Ready for more potty talk? We were visiting a shrine and I got in line to use the public restroom. It was a long line, but finally began moving. It was then I noticed the four elderly Japanese women in front of me tucking the bottom of their pants into their stocking hose. I leaned over and watched each of them and wondered why, but realized they were older, wiser, and well....Japanese. So they knew something I did not know. As did my friend Laurel, who happened to write about potties this week, too.
I bent over and cuffed up my jeans drastically like I was going to enter a flood zone. The Japanese woman behind me roared this amazingly loud and heartfelt laugh (odd for such a peaceful, quiet kind of people) . She looked around to see if anyone else observed me, but no one else got to enjoy the white girl yanking up her pants. I shrugged my shoulders and smiled at her, eager to see what was behind these restroom doors.
Well, it was a toilet without a base! How does a toilet without a base even exist? Somehow I needed to squat in this tiny box and aim into this porcelein hole in the ground. It was so odd to me. I had no idea which way to face and bashed my head into the toilet paper dispenser with my pants at my ankles as I tried to perfect my squat while leaning forward to watch my target. Wait, I was facing the wrong way! Then I bashed my head into the wall because I turned around without standing up for some brilliant reason. I was beating myself up, literally, trying to figure out how to pee. It should not have been this challenging. But I can always find a way to complicate things. It still cracks me up to think of how funny it would have been to see the whole ordeal from the outside.
