Japanese Women's Irritating Toilet Habit (2005-04-08)
Many Japanese women have a toilet eccentricity that irks me to no end. When these people enter a stall, the first thing they do is flush the toilet before they pee. The reason being that they think it is embarrassing for others to hear them pee. Some toilets actually have a button that produces flushing sound for such purpose.
To the average Japanese, so many things are "embarrassing".
Being photographed is embarrassing, being interviewed on the street is
embarrassing, wearing sleeveless shirts that show arms other than
matchstick-size is embarrassing, even getting praised is
embarrassing. In this culture, it is not polite to just accept
commendation with a graceful "thank you", one has to deny such praise
is justified. A typical exchange of praise goes like this:
A: You speak very good English.
B: No, no, no, not at all! I've been studying it for a long time
and my English is still so poor, blah blah blah...
But I digress. Going back to the toilet habit, I don't understand why the sound of urine hitting the water in the toilet bowl is so embarrassing that Japanese women need to hide it, not to mention the total waste of gallons of water doing it. These women have a seriously distorted self image, or perhaps they are just overly pruddish and teetering on the brink of some mental disorder.
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