The Landlady makes comparisons
Sorry to bang on so much about Japan, but the more I think about it retrospectively, the more strange a cultural experience I think it was.
On the menu were items like ‘skin’ and raw horsemeat, both of which we sampled, but we felt it wise to watch our waistlines and draw the line at ‘deep fried gristle’. With such culinary delights, one wonders how the Japanese maintain such a healthy elderly population…
“Due to our eight-month winter, the blossom is a little tardy”
Due to the Japanese, who are totally obsessed with it, I came back a teeny bit keen on blossom and am delighted to have caught the end of the blossom season in Japan – which was apparently early this year – to return to the beginning of it in England. Clearly, due to our eight-month winter, the blossom is a little tardy in the UK this year and I have to restrain myself from rushing to St Ann’s Well Gardens to take photographs in the style of the Japanese, who seem to snap every leaf and bough.
I am now also rather disappointed in the public conveniences in the UK, which are completely substandard in comparison to those prevalent in Japan. All Japanese toilets, even those on the Shinkansen bullet trains are spotlessly clean, made by Panasonic and have a computerised arm on the side with a display of buttons, with which one can apparently do a variety of things to your nether regions, should you have the inclination to fiddle. I have to admit that I didn’t have any desire to spray hot water and did not even like the fact that the toilet seats had a heating device which warmed the seat before use. It kind of reminded me of having to use the bathroom after my dad had been in there reading the Daily Mail for an hour in the morning in the 1970s.
Having only been back from Japan for 10 days, I am now about to enter a very different culture and am on a long haul flight to West Africa to visit The Boyfriend and maybe coax him gently back to Hove now that the summer seems to have shakily commenced. In West Africa, as far as I have experienced, one is lucky to have water in the toilet, let alone heated seats and jet sprays, but the heat and beauty of the location of some of the toilets more than make up for it. My favourite toilet is in a coastal hotel, where there is no roof on the conveniences and one looks up when seated to see a huge palm tree populated by a myriad of tropical birds… well they say variety is the spice of life.
