My first experience with a squat toilet...

So while we were stranded in the airport, I found myself in dire need of restroom facilities and headed off to the room marked with a little pink figure of a woman. When I got inside I noticed that each stall had a picture of what was within. The pictures ranged from an image of a person sitting on a toilet with a picture of a baby in a seat on the wall, to a picture of a butt being sprayed, to a picture of a squat toilet and all in different combinations within the stalls...

By the time I found myself in the restroom, there was no time to dally and wait for someone to exit one of the 'western' toilets, so I opted for a cleanly squat toilet, presuming that 'it can't be that tough'. well, it wasn't as simple as I had thought it would be and I found myself having a tough time keeping my shoes dry. I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say, it's much easier to go in the woods or something than to try to go in a porcelain trough...

I managed, after much scrambling, to exit the stall with my shoes still dry (a miracle) and headed to the sinks which despite the prehistoric era of my toilet, were entirely automated, even down to the soap dispenser.

I later used one of the regular toilets in another area of the airport, and there is a button you can push to make flushing sounds, so that you don't have to be embarassed by someone hearing you tinkle. Apparently, women in Japan are embarrassed by this potentiality and will waste as much as 20 liters of water per toilet visit by holding down the flusher the whole time they are in there, so in an effort to stop such water waste, they have created the artificial toilet flush. lol, I was so busy trying not to fall into my little trough, it had never crossed my mind to be worried that someone might hear me make water...