Bathroom Decorum

This weekend, I had the distinct pleasure of using my first bidet. (A bidet, in case you are wondering is a suped-up toilet). I was at Cha-an, a Japanese teahouse around St. Marks and I have to say, the tea and desserts were just ok...but the bathroom rocked.

Upon arriving inside the room, the toilet cover automatically raised itself for me. Intrigued, I studied the manual next to the Japanese bidet. It looked awfully complicated. But nevertheless, I was up for the challenge. I picked "front wash" (instead of uh-hum..."rear wash") and it starts making a low grumbling noise and suddenly I felt this trickle of warm water gushing against me. It was SO ticklish. Then it would NOT stop! I finally realized after several minutes you have to manually hit "stop."

Finally returning to my table, I was all giggles and full of stupid excitement. My companion, Jeremy, was like "what the heck happened??" So I described in great detail and declared that I must, I must have a bidet in my future house. To not have one is just backwards. Jeremy nodded emphatically in agreement, "Yes, Americans are such neanderthals! How do they live!" ;) I highly recommended that he take a trip to the loo. But to his disappointment, there was NO bidet in the men's room! Shocking! Well, I suppose it makes sense. =) So he snuck a peek in the ladies' room before we left. Then I learned that when he went to Japan, apparently there was another button on those bidets where you can have it continually flush, the purpose of which is to mask the sound of an embarrassingly loud #2 since Japanese walls are so thin.

Anyways, so that's my bathroom story and no, it was not the highlight of my weekend...but it was close! hehe.