Toilette Etiquette
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I took the airport limo to Shinjuku station. It might sound glamorous but over here limos are actually busses. It took an hour and a half! My hotel is located west of the station and my room is about as big as a shoe box. I'm not complaining, it's really cheap. The bathroom is a sort of built-in, moulded plastic affair with a bath that's tiny and a shower that's attached to the taps in the sink.


I was hoping for one of those Japanese toilets that have a seat warmer, but alas, mine only has a built in water spray, operated with a button, to clean your bits with. HAAHAH.

When you sit down on the seat, water immediately starts flowing, as if you flushed it already. This is to cover the sounds of any kinds of bodily emissions. In some toilets, there are what are known as 'etiquette bells' and these play the sound of the toilet flushing. I guess these are the environmentally friendly establishments.


This means you can take a dump safe in the knowledge that everyone knows you're taking a dump because they can hear the flushing sounds of the etiquette bell which you only press when you take a dump . Bizarre. In one bar I went to, the damn thing was on a remote sensor and went off when I moved. This is where my understanding of the Japanese culture began and then ended. They're into women dressed as school girls and there are love hotels on every corner (i.e. hotels where you rent rooms for a couple of hours at a time), yet the mere thought of someone hearing them having a pee makes them shudder in shame. What a paradox!

I wAnder how, I wAnder why
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On Saturday, I spent the day wandering around, bought crap, saw the sights of Shinjuku, which are a temple, department stores as big as the Amsterdam arena, a billion restaurants and various salubrious bars. Tokyo is really like nothing I have ever seen or experienced before. Girls really do wear long over-the-knee socks and tiny pleated skirts. Boys really do wear the skinniest jeans you can imagine and have the wildest hairstyles. People really do kow-tow to you when you enter or leave somewhere. Shoes come off at every available opportunity...now I know why everyone wears slip-on shoes. Laces are a pain. I saw a boy washing something on a stall outside a glasses shop; he was cleaning his specs on a specially-made machine.



I ate sushi from a conveyor belt where there were little taps by every seat so you could fill up on as much green tea as you liked and where I, as a seasoned sushi-eater, could not identify almost anything in front of my face.

And then it started to rain...
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Apparently Jesus, or was it the Lord, I never know the difference, said "I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth." Well, he was talking about Japan and the living substances in this case were my socks and shoes and poor little trotters. I had to blow dry my trainers with the hairdryer this morning so I could wear them again. It has not stopped raining for almost 48 hours. In that time, I have purchased three umbrellas (one I destroyed, but I guess that's what happens when you pay 20 cents for a Chinese import, one I left on the subway and the other is still in my possession, in its um-dom* by the door), and I have learned that flip flops and shorts are the most appropriate attire for such weather (after getting lead-heavy legs from my sodden jeans and shoes).



*There are more umbrellas in Tokyo than people. Every shop/restaurant you go into has a system whereby you either put it in an umbrella stand or, more commonly, you stick it into a long plastic bag that looks like, ahum, a condom. Therefore, I have coined the term um-dom. Patent pending.

Don Quixote
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There's a shop I came across called Don Quixote. My god. Its five floors are stacked floor to ceiling with the most amazing amount of crap you can imagine. Of course, I loved it and spent a rainy hour in there. There were tiny aisles only big enough for one person to pass through at a time and the organisation was so haphazard that, if you were actually looking for anything, you'd never find it. There was food and cosmetics, tools and clothes, DVDs and rice cookers, and even a floor full of designer brands. Bizarre. As I was queuing up to buy an umbrella, squished up against some toothpaste on one side and noodles on another, I looked up and saw the funniest thing I have ever seen: "Sod lotion". Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Sod lotion. And do you know what sod lotion is? It's, ahem, lubricant. AHAHAHAH. Oh how I cackled to myself.



NOOOOO!
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I tried on some shoes. Not like me to try on shoes but you know, when in Japan do as the Japanese do, which is buy shoes, obviously. The shop assistant was a little old man, who could speak a very small amount of English (like 'small', 'medium' or 'large'...yes, the shoes in the shop had only those three sizes and me, with tiny size 36 , had to squeeze my piggy totters into an L. The shame. THE SHAME). I couldn't decide whether I wanted them. So I pointed out that the buckle was a bit tight and he immediately dropped to his knees, saying what I think must have been 'sorry, sorry' and began pawing the buckle and trying to take them off. I was MORT-I-FIED. I ended up buying the shoes because I felt guilty that this poor, old man thought he had to get on his old arthritic knees and get close to my soggy and sweaty trotters. Never matter, they were only the equivalent of EUR 6. Yes, that's right. Japan is not as expensive as you might think. Accommodation ain't the cheapest, but I've not yet eaten a meal, including beer, that has cost me more than JPY 1,200, which is about EUR 7.