It's a slow Friday so here's my pointless story of Tokyo:
I don't get embarassed easily, but this can be classified as one of the most embarassing stories of my life. A real "boy is my face red" moment.
My wife and I are in Tokyo for our honeymoon about nine years ago. I'm not a great traveller because my bowels fluctuate wildly between 'broken cement mixer' and 'Super Soaker 90,000' when abroad. This usually means I always scout locations for bathrooms like I'm Jason Bourne looking for exits.
We get to the Shinegawa train station to go to Osaka (or maybe it was Kyoto) after a week in Tokyo where I crammed nearly anything into my mouth with little disregard to meal times. Ramen, meat on sticks, green tea ice cream, normal ice cream, meat not on sticks, sushi, more sushi, sides of sushi... anything you can name.
To no one's surprise, when we get the train station my stomach begins to rumble. Hard. Like, an upside down Mount Vesuvius.
Japan's a beautiful place. It's people, landscapes, cityscapes. All of it. This also extends to public bathrooms. They're spotless... even in train stations and it's amazing. The level of respect its citizens have for public spaces is astounding.
I find a single bathroom (i.e. one room with one toilet and sink), lock the door, drop my pants and just proceed to destroy this poor toilet. I resembled something like this:
When I'm done, sweaty, and normal I look around. How do I flush? This doesn't look like my hotel toilet. I press numerous times what should be the flush button and nothing happens. So I look around and I see a handle with a piece of string attached up towards the ceiling and think, "hey this could be how you flush. My grandma's old place in Hong Kong had this."
So I pull it. It doesn't flush and nothing happens. So I shrug and like a total dbag, wash my hands and decide to just leave.
Within not even 2 minutes of pulling that handle I get a polite knock on the door:
"<Japanese>"
Me: "Hello. Yes?"
"<Japanese>"
I open the door and there are two uniformed station employees. I slowly make the connection between the string I pulled and these two poor employees at the door. I want to stress the mess I made in the bowl makes my Top 3. Possibly the GOAT.
Me: "Oh god. Please don't come in."
"<Japanese>" They start peering in
Me: "I think your toilet is broken, please tell me where the flush button is so I can make sure."
"<Japanese> It's ok, we look."
Me: "Please don't. You guys aren't paid enough to deal with this today."
"<Japanese>" They politely open the door and look around.
The look of horror on these poor men's faces is something I'll never forget. It was 95% horror and 5% impressed. I'm basically panicking at this point and don't know what to do. Your fight or flight response kicks in and all I manage to muster is:
"I'm... so... sorry. Also, I'm American."
And then I ran. I even remember the sound of the door click close behind them. Grabbed my wife, suitcases, took off to the train, and have lived with the shame and embarassment ever since.
I'm sorry I failed you Japan. I'm sorry kind train station employees.