"And, the bidet..."

Warning: What you are about to read was written under extreme jet lag. Don't be surprised if it makes absolutely no sense. 

Traveling is a bitch; international travel even more so. My layover in Japan was not very long. I was in a hurry to get to the restroom and freshen up before the last leg of the journey to Bangkok, which is a 6-hour flight. Apparently, Japan has a different limit as to what you can bring through security. So when I exited the metal detector and tried to retrieve my belongings a woman stopped me and started pointing at my zip lock bag of liquids. She grabbed it before I could ask her the problem and kindly opened the bag, taking out my tube of toothpaste, my deodorant (the gel kind), and my face wash and threw them in the trash. It was all over before I could even try and talk her out of it. With my dreams of cleanliness gone, I wandered into the bathroom. And then I saw the toilet.

All the seats came with the same instructions. The blue button, as you can see, sprays the cheeks. The pink one is the bidet. The green one is a handy button that makes the sound of a flushing toilet in the event that whatever you are doing makes noises that would seem a bit embarrassing. I studied the buttons as I did my business. When I was done, I stood up then sat right back down. What the hell, “when in Rome”, ect. Without going into details, I didn’t feel much of a difference between the bidet button and the spray button. The warm water was a nice touch but didn’t last long. Frankly, I didn’t see what the fuss was all about. Perhaps private bidets are more, shall we say, thorough, than public ones…

In any I case, I left the bathroom, with bad breath and B.O. but a clean bum, and boarded the plane for Bangkok.