happy bidet - here come the warm jets

so this is the type of toilet we are using in our hotel bathroom...



i'd heard about how civilised japanese toilet culture is, but experiencing it first-hand is a lavatorial revelation

everything is clean, shiny and spotless over here, even cleaner than singapore, and toilets all over tokyo seem to be the ultimate expression of this high level of personal and communal hygiene as well as being yet another example of how the japanese are world leaders in any field of technological jiggery pokery they care to put their minds to



using a toilet is a bit confusing at first as there is a belwildering array of controls to familiarise yourself with - seat warmers, plastic seat covers, jets, sprays, scents to mask noxious odours and sound effects to mask embarrassing bodily functional noises, to name but a few - some toilets even play music to cover over the sounds made during the course of communing with nature, while others play a short recording of running water for about thirty seconds, a duration, however, i feel is too short in some cases - after a night's sleep and with a full bladder come morning, half a minute is not really enough to effectively obliterate the sounds of a long and satisfying evacuation - particularly if you are prone to three or four lingering shorts spurts after the main one...



there are two control settings for the bidet as the picture illustrates

so i experimented with both settings on my first attempt - i assumed you were supposed to use both - the first which sprays a direct jet up to a place where the sun never shines and the second which squirts the surrounding fleshy parts - both jets direct streams of water which move backwards and forwards slightly, so covering the whole undercarriage area

although this process was fairly effective, i was slightly disappointed when having finished, i discovered a little residue left over on subsequent investigation with a piece of two-ply



but then i worked out the solution - i call it 'the ainsley harriott manoeuvre' as it involves moving your lower body around on the toilet seat in much the same way that dear old ainsley rotates his hips when he picks up a wok or frying pan to mix up their contents - this proved to be much more effective, although i will never be able to watch 'ready steady cook' in the same way again...

so to conclude i would just like to say that, apart from a delicious sliver of pan-seared fois gras slipping down your throat, there is nothing better than a controlled rush of perfectly heated water shooting up your jacksy



i dedicate this posting to my friends shane and sarah currently residing in brunei - over the last twenty or so years we have shared many lavatorial anecdotes from our travels

so carry on up the khyber!