May I go to the bathroom?

This week in classs we talked about culture shock. Mr. Salituro talked about his experience with a Japenese toilet and being culture shocked after he got off the airplane and wanted to go to the bathroom. The Japanese toilet is in the ground and you have to squat to go into it. Just like Mr. Salituro I had an experience with a Japenese toilet but it was more modernized like the toilets we use. In Hawaii there is a huge population of Japenese residents and also tourist, so naturally Honolulu (a city on one of the islands) caters to the customs of the Japanese. Me and my family got stuck in a Japanese mall about a month ago in Hawaii. We were culture shocked as to how to get out because it is like a maze to get out a Japanese mall they take you by every store so you have to look. Also my family really needed to go to the bathroom. As my mom came with me to the bathroom she told me not to use the cleaning device...being the unknown to Japanese culture I had no idea what she was talking about. As I walked in the stall I soon found out what she meant, I saw there was this control panel and you could tilt the toilet so it could clean you off with the spraying water. Naturally my culture shock threw me off and thankfully there was toilet paper because other wise I would be just like Mr.Salituro and not know what to do. It was strange to me that Japanese didn't use toilet paper but after Mr.Salituro explained in class why they go to the bathroom the way they do it started to kind of make sense. My brother was also fortunate enough to go on a trip called birthright, which is a free trip to Israel. On the trip he told us that Israeli's use a different kind of toilet flusher in order to save on water because Israel is low on fresh water. So there is a yellow tab you pull if you go numder 1 and uses less water and tab number 2 as you guessed it was brown and used more water. It's interesting to see that different cultures have different reasons for going to the bathroom.