The Old Fashioned Kind
Mike,
Is this a suitable subject for the blog. You be the judge.
I was doing my weekly clothes washing and happened into the men’s room next door. Pushed open one of the stalls and nearly fell backwards in astonishment at what I saw. See attachment.) I hadn’t seen one of these since ’72 in Indonesia, where they probably have them still. I checked the other stalls here and in the computer buiding, and there were the usual modern electrically-heated (I kid you not), super-efficient appliances.
So why is this relic still around? My guess is that some of the farm boy students or, maybe, some of the more ancient astronomers, don’t know what do do with the new-fangled things, and they resort to the old standby (squatby) that the Shoguns used.
Your faithful reporter on Nobeyama trivia,
Shamaru
Editor’s note: Ed’s either in the air or back home by now.
Well, I believe those are still the norm. Though everywhere I went, from home to home, there was the “SWASH” (GOOGLE THAT), or something analogous.
At my friend’s clinic, the lid would open as the bathroom door opened. And from there on, the entertainment would begin.
For those of us with poor knees, the traditional mode of the commode always invited the risk of squatting down, and being stuck there….
Comment by gaijin — December 21, 2005 @ 1:03 pm
Maybe they’re the norm–I didn’t get to see much of the “norm”, sad to say. But if the “norm” is the traditional commode, I’m a modernist.
Yep, I’m home again, in a less-wired environment. I’ve never had 24-h access to the web before like I had at Nobeyama. Lots of daytime interludes to write/vaporate & fiddle with pictures on one computer while waiting for a program to finish on another. Then evenings at my net-connected laptop doing a web zen kind of thing for hours at a time.
Comment by rakkity — December 21, 2005 @ 2:26 pm
Welcome back to everything but dial-up.
Comment by michael — December 21, 2005 @ 2:36 pm
Btw, I remember these contraptions in public restrooms in parts of Europe in ought’81.
Comment by michael — December 21, 2005 @ 4:10 pm