I’ve been to Asia before, so squat toilets are not a novelty. Perhaps stinky, unusal, requiring a lifetime’s coordination, and daunting, but not novel. I’m reminded of a recent trip down the Hume Highway, we made a pit stop at the Benalla BP & McDonalds to fuel, freshen up, & use their conveniences. We had the misfortune to use the toilets 10 minutes after a busload of Chinese tourists had gone through, and other than especially poor aim, I am still trying to picture how people were doing what they were doing as there were footprints on the loo seat.

Puts you right off.

We’d gotten used to the Japanese squat in our Osaka residence with only the mild fear that the door handle of support might snap sending us toppling into mixed company areas. The superb bullet trains also give you a choice of Japanese or Western-style so at least the art of balance at 300km/h is not always required.

The Japanese Bidet was also a revelation, not only for the gentle squirting of cleasing warmed water, nor for the post clean air dry blower, but for the controls. Should you be presented with a toilet seat and electronic controls, on no account should you look down and assume the squirty button is ‘flush’ unless you’d like your face washed. The flush mechanism is usually attached to the cistern.

Convenience stores also tended to have publically usable (usually Western) toilets, and we came across a particularly beautiful one at the Nara museum. We discovered a few weeks later though that the hygiene standards and availability of public Western toilets were not nearly so good in Hong Kong…