Singing Toilets and Typhoons

(LEFT: view from my room in the Tokyo hotel)

Well, friends and family,

After 3 days of orientation with 1,300 other new JETs in the Keio Plaza Hotel in Tokyo, I'm ready to head off into the wild beyond… that's right. Getting on the plane for Okinawa tomorrow. I thought, however, that I should first regale you all with stories of my orientation. For the most part, it's been boring, as you could have suspected. Lots of dressing up uncomfortably, going to seminars, and sparkling chandeliers at our fancy hotel.

A word on the toilets in Japan: other than the frequent squat toilet, they are very high tech. the operation involves an entire handle of buttons with pictures and kanji on them. I haven't yet dared to discover what any of these buttons do BUT: the toilets in Japan are musical. Yes, musical. As soon as your pee hits the bowl, it begins to play the sound of rushing waters... some even have a volume control. One might assume that the noise is intended to help start the pee flow, but it turns out that the music is to MASK the sound of your pee and avoid embarrassing others in neighboring stalls. OK, the toilet story gets better. We went to a restaurant called Heaven and Hell, where you had to go down a dusty corridor and bang on a large Chinese gong 3 times in order to enter. Then a slot opens in the door, and a scary monster asks you for the password, which the kind Chinese server will give you. In the bathroom stall things get really weird. This giant face composes one wall of the stall, the one you're facing when you sit down to pee. You think "ha-ha, a giant plastic scary face" no problem. But, once again activated by pee-pressure, this face begins to sing in Japanese. As you continue to pee, staring suspiciously at the singing giant directly before you, the face suddenly begins to move towards you… the entire wall is moving towards you, making the room smaller and smaller (reminiscent of that scene in Star Wars in the trash pit) but you can't escape because YOU'RE STILL PEEING. The face gets close enough to kiss your knees with it's big puckered lips, then it chuckles, moves back, and says something in Japanese. Whoa. Creeeepy.

Who remembers those buttons on the toilets in Germany? A little flush button and a big flush button, conveniently hinting at #1 and #2. Well, the Japanese have something similar but not quite as subtle. BIG is written on one side of the flush, and SMALL is written on the other. So practical.

Typhoon #8
Then I thought, "orientation is over in Tokyo! Now it's off to orientation in Okinawa!" Instead, it was time to wile away 11 hours in the Tokyo airport, waiting with all the other Okinawa JETs as flight after flight to Okinawa was cancelled and rescheduled due to typhoon #8. The main problem was there was not only a typhoon in Tokyo, but also another one in Okinawa; so even if we'd been able to take off in Tokyo, we wouldn't have been able to land in Naha. The time was, however, well-spent playing group games and taking vigorous walks around the very small airport, sampling many a coffee in between.

We arrived in Naha, Okinawa at 10.30pm. Municipal JETs were to be directly picked up by their supervisors, and kencho-JETs (yours truly) were going to a hotel for orientation the next day. What was my surprise then, to be met by my supervisors who had driven all the way to Naha lugging wives, children, and predecessors, just to greet me for 5 minutes before I was whisked away. Waving a huge welcome sign. Hmmm, warm fuzzy feelings☺