MusicMarketplace.com
This is a ramble about the bathroom and if you’re reading this while eating, I apologize. I got in the bathroom at a cafe yesterday. Although the cafe was Western-style, the bathroom was Japanese-style. For those who are unfamiliar with it, let me explain a little. The Japanese-style bathroom has a shallow bowl in the floor with no toilet seat. You have to squat down when you use it, which is terribly uncomfortable and unsanitary. I loathe it. When I encounter the Japanese-style, I don’t use it and look for the Western-style that is dominant nowadays in Japan. In the cafe’s bathroom, a towel was hung beside the sink like in the bathroom of a home. Both the toilet and the sink were out of the question for me altogether. I left the cafe and went in the mall nearby which rest room was Western-style. As a germ phobic, I always carry sterilizing liquid and some toilet seat covers that the Japanese bathroom rarely equips. And I have a ritual when I use the bathroom outside my house. I first wash my hands with soap, wipe them with a paper towel, open and close the bathroom door with the paper towel instead of my bare hand, wipe my hands thoroughly with toilet paper, spray the toilet seat with sterilizing liquid, put a toilet seat cover, and finally sit down. During the ritual in the mall’s rest room, the unthinkable happened. I dropped my ring into the toilet bowl! It could have happened to anyone, but why me a germ phobic? Only two choices were given to me; either giving up the ring or dipping my hand into the bowl. And I had to decide quickly, as the train to my home was coming soon and the next train would be two hours later if I missed it. While the ring is a cheap one, I’m also a cheap person. I picked up the ring from the bowl. I washed my hand and the ring with soap frantically over and over, and spray sterilizing liquid on them amply. I consumed the time for shopping and barely caught the train. I wondered if I should have given up the ring. What if I fell into the lava for greed like Gollum in ‘Lord of the Rings’? On my way home, the station attendant didn’t take the ticket, so that I had a free train ride unexpectedly. That may have shown I didn’t fall. I’ve kept washing my hand but it still feels dirty…
