Japanese Bathroom

The second greatest thing about Japan was the bathrooms. I'll get to the greatest thing next time. It's awesome.

We did a lot of drinking and walking around in Japan, so there wasn't always a bar or restaurant restroom to use. But there always seemed to be a public outdoor toilet around, and that was highly convenient, despite there being no toilet paper.

The hotel bathroom was really cool. In Korea, they have the high-tech toilet seats in fancy places, as well, but there aren't handy English directions for me to read at Lotte department store or the posh bars around here. But at the Japanese hotel, I was warned that upon sitting on the seat, a flow of water would begin and last for a few seconds and that the seat was heated. I also learned how to use the bidet properly, which was amusing. It made me wonder about the testing process in getting the stream direction, temperature, pressure, and diameter just right. Yes, very funny. The only thing the directions did not explain was which flush control was for light flush and which was for heavy, but that's easily solved through trial and error.

The first morning after my shower I discovered the suitest thing:

It's a little hard to see because I had to go next door to borrow Emily's camera and the bathroom had cooled down by then, but notice the difference between the left side of the mirror and the right side. The mirror covers most of the wall over the sink and toilet, as I recall, but there's this very clear rectangle over the sink that doesn't fog up while the hot water is going, so you don't have to wipe off the glass to style your hair, shave, do makeup, whatever. That's so awesome.

I also liked that the hotel didn't use miniature bars of soap or shampoo and conditioner bottles. Instead they conserved a lot of plastics by having wall-mounted, push-button containers of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash in the shower, next to the sink.

Japan Last Night

For our final night in Fukuoka, we went back across the canal to the row of outdoor food stands overlooking the water. We figured it would be kind of cheap (for Japan) to eat at a stand, but evidently eating on prime view real estate costs kind of a lot. We ate like a little variety pack of meat on a stick and some noodle soup, as I recall, and I don't remember how much it actually was per person, but we were all very disappointed with the price. We were also getting a lot of silent, and then more vocal, pressure from the proprietors to get the hell out, as some of the group were taking their time with their beers. It didn't really seem like anyone was waiting, but I'm sure they would rather have a table ready to rope customers in.

Afterwards we found these two chicks who were doing quite an entertaining musical performance. We stayed and watched for a while and talked to a couple of the locals.

Here are some shots of the bridge. This is the silver statue lady:

And some street (bridge) musician:

And us. This is my new jacket, by the way:

Next we were on our way to a bar, but got distracted by all these bands lined up in the park that was giving the music festival earlier in the day. We heard this band of strapping young lads, called Sept Couleurs, and decided to listen to them for a while. I think we stayed about two hours, drinking beers from the corner store the whole time. They were quite good, and a lot of fun.

The dude in the white hat we met over where the two chicks were playing. He was talking to us for a while and seemed cool and I figured he could find us a good bar, so I invited him along when we left, even if only to be polite and not leave him hanging. He ended up being pretty annoying, continually bothering us to get going to the bar, while we were enjoying the music from these boys. We told him to go ahead if he wanted, but he waited for us, anyway. When we finally were ready to go, he brought us to this bar called Broadway (he had previously told us he had been an actor in New York and worked on Broadway, and we were very impressed, but I think that was a miscommunication).

Eventually Emily joined in while the others took a break:

The coolest thing about these guys is that although they didn't speak a lick of English, the singer was still able to sing Beatles songs, and even read the lyrics he didn't know (in English) WHILE PLAYING AND SINGING as someone scrolled down a lyrics website on a cell phone.

When we got to the bar, we ordered a very large pitcher, which I guess Emily didn't take a picture of (these are all her pictures), and the white hat dude drank some of it, but didn't contribute any money. What a douchebag. Evidently he was a promoter or an employer for the bar, and had been antsy all night because we were wasting good money-spending time away from his bar.

This is how I feel about THAT guy:

Japan Next Day

Well, this has got to be a short post, since I'm busier than I've ever been in my life, practically.

So day broke in Japan, and I think I was the only one in the group who got up early enough to take advantage of free breakfast. It was good--combination of Japanese and Western breakfast.

Later in the morning, the boys went out to do touristy things, and the girls went shopping. My goal was to get some sharp boots and a smart jacket, and some souvenirs or something.




Apparently there was some music festival going on that weekend, so everywhere we went there were bands playing. It was cool. Here's the nearby park where they had a lineup of bands all afternoon. We stayed and saw one band, but then there was a break for a while, and we needed lunch, so we left.

For lunch we had coffee and Italian. It was pretty good.

Next we went across the canal nearby to the little downtown area, where this tourist-helping police robot was patrolling. I also spent quite a bit of time in the Pokemon store, but I couldn't bring myself to buy anything. I probably could have spent all day in there.

We saw this band in the mall courtyard, which was decorated for Halloween. I spilled coffee on my leg.

After several hours of wandering around this mall and hitting a number of other stores along the street, I ended up with a smart jacket, but no boots. I have calves way too massive to buy boots in Asia. Le sigh...

Japan Night 1

So let's flash back a few weeks to the first weekend in October, when I went to Fukuoka, Japan with some friends. We got there in the early evening and after a brief rest, went out to find some supper and drinking.

These are the sounds I picture coming out of us in this picture: Grrrrr! YEAH! Teeee! Hmmmm. Hyuk!


I'm not sure who these chicks are. They might have worked at the restaurant we went to, but they might also be prostitutes.


This is the restaurant we ended up at, after walking around for a while. We chose it because it seemed reasonably priced, at about $5-7 for a lot of the dishes. It ended up being not so great, because that kind of money only got us a plate with only five or six bites on it. We should have known better in Japan. We ended up going to a chicken place later in the night, because we got hungry again.



After we walked around trying to find a decent bar, we ended up at this reggae place, which was pretty cool. The drinks were priced okay, and the music was good, of course.

Next we got to a nice jazz bar with lots of old records. Unfortunately, we didn't notice on the outside menu that there was a 700 yen cover charge, so the one beer I had while we were there cost me about 15 bucks. We learned to read more carefully before entering a bar.

There don't seem to be any pictures of me at that jazz bar, so here are the others:

After the jazz bar it was the chicken place I mentioned, and then back home. The next day in Japan was a bit more interesting than the first.