I'm still pretty proud of my little self for navigating the train/MRT system in Taipei enough to get to the Sungshan airport in time to check in. I've taken the MRT system several times before, and it's still a mystery to me how I manage to get to the right places with all those people and confusing signage.
I really hate flying. I view it as one of those things you just have to do to get to all the good things in life. :) But I have to say, the one thing I do really enjoy about flying in an airplane is the descent into the airports. There's just something so magical to me about flying low over tiny little houses and neighborhoods and cities, and I just can't help but wonder about all the people living and working and going about their days or nights inside those tiny buildings, and driving places in those tiny cars. The descent into Tokyo was at night, so it was full of flashing neon lights and high rise buildings, but nonetheless fascinating to me.
What I really wanted to blog about Tokyo was the bathrooms. I know that's strange. I've never posted a blog about a bathroom before, as I usually don't find bathrooms very interesting. I'd heard that Japanese people take their bathroom comfort seriously, but I didn't expect to experience it firsthand in my tiny corner of the Tokyo airport. I posted a few photos below to illustrate: (and yes, I did feel kind of dumb snapping photos in a bathroom stall, but I was so impressed at first I was kind of scared to actually use the thing, so I stood there and wondered at it for kind of a long time):
All the stalls were like this one. At first I thought I was in the handicapped stall with all the specially call for help buttons, but upon closer inspection, they were all like this and the buttons are not to call for help.
The buttons are to activate the water squirting cleaning things in the toilet. I wanted to take a closer picture of the great chinglish (japanglish?) interpretations of the instructions, but they were a little crude in a way and also my cell phone camera isn't that great.
*ahem* I did play with the buttons but not while I was actually using the toilet. I just wanted to see what it did. It does, indeed, squirt warm water into the air. It's weird.
I was also blown away by the hand dryers. (HAHAHAH I made a funny!) They are about 1000 x as intense as a normal puny hand dryer in your average bathroom. These Japanese people, they know cleanliness.
And that, my friends, is what I had to report from Tokyo. That, and Japanese is a really cute sounding language. :)
The warm water it squirts into a water = a bidet. I actually flew through Tokyo on my home from Taiwan too, and the bathroom by my gate gave you the option between toilets with or without a bidet (there were pictures of a little fountain). It amused me a lot too!
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