Japanese Features Japanese public bathrooms Soceity and Customs

Public Bathrooms

We would like to talk about public bathrooms.  Public bathrooms are called "Koushuu Benjyo" in Japanese.  This Japanese term has a hidden meaning of women who spread their legs to literally anybody, who wants to deposit his seeds in their body.  Sorry, we a little digressed from the main point.

In Japan, it is easy to spot bathrooms when you travel.  First of all, inside or just outside any train station, you can easily find them.  What is more, the bathrooms at train stations are pretty clean.  Even small stores have clean bathrooms.  Grocery stores, which have bathrooms mostly for their employees, allow you to use their bathrooms.

If you are desperate on the street, you can relieve yourself in the bathrooms at convenience stores, which you can easily find.  If you can hold a little longer, you should look for department stores because they have very clean, sometimes really gorgeous bathrooms, which accompany powder rooms with decorative chairs and mirrors.  

In New York City, in contrast, it is very difficult to find public bathrooms.  When traveling in the City, you have to plan ahead your bathroom use: where you can use bathrooms since those in stores and restaurants are basically for their customers.  Sometimes, even big train stations do not have bathrooms open to the public.  If such train stations have them at all, most of the time their bathrooms are pretty filthy.

A Japanese popular guidebook for New York also shows how difficult to find public bathrooms in NYC: A detailed map (how informative the map is, right?) provides specific information on public bathrooms for Japanese travelers.  

The lack of pubic bathrooms in NYC creates some interesting scenes we would never encounter on the street in Japan.  Sometimes, people who cannot hold back their emergency need rush to a garbage can to urinate in the can.  Without witnessing the act of peeing, we can easily guess what is going on by a look of relief on their face.

In Brooklyn, a lady urinated in a squatting posture on the street.  We saw her urine coming out between her legs.  Some other time in Queens, we saw a man shooting his pee in the open air while literally walking on the street.  From a little distance, we just saw some trajectories of "fountain-like" shoots up in the air and did not understand what he was doing at first.  Hardly we had come very close to taking the "shower" from him when we realized that he was peeing while walking on the street. 

Another post about public bathrooms may interest you.