750 yen, 30 minutes in line, a bowl and a half of the most delicious ramen on the planet, and the realization of why bathrooms in Japan smell the way they do, ramen farts.
And now a special Garbage Gut edition of Culture Shock: Living with Seasons (the Joy of Seasonal Scatology)
In San Francisco it was nice to pretend that we could feel things changing. Some leaves would turn, it'd start to get slightly colder. Here in Japan the seasons are an event. We actually lucked out in September and found ourselves at Ise Shrine (a nationally renowned holy place) on the day when summer became fall. There was a big celebration, dances, performances, etc. The seasonal transition was abrupt too; T-shirt weather ceased on THAT day.
The food in the fall is amazing: chestnuts, sweet potatoes (at a BBQ I ate a sweet potato baked underground which seared the roof of my mouth and the thing is kind of sticky too so I couldn't get it off quickly either. I haven't had a baked sweet potato since, but they're delicious), tea, and mushrooms.
Those special autumn mushrooms are amazing, and they're not uncommon. Most of the time I end up purchasing a bento with 'em for lunch. There are even festivals that celebrate this mushroom.
These mushrooms are notorious for giving people putrid gas and similarly liberal bowels. But, they are so seductive no one can resist the temptation, so much so that scatology has become just as important a part of the festival as anything else. I was able to attend a festival in Gifu, famously toting itself as the most foul smelling of all mushroom festivals, and the most Western friendly*.
*An important announcement concerning bathrooms in Japan:
They can be wonderful, even glamorous places; very clean, fully automatic. All Western style toilets feature seat warming, bidets, perfume, and a button that triggers a fake flush noise to drown out people's personal pooping noises. The button was installed to prevent people from actually flushing the toilet to mask their moans and groans effectively conserving water.
I'd say nine out of ten times this is the type of toilet you will find in a Japanese public restroom. But do not allow yourself to be deceived by the ingenuity, the public bathroom is still a grotesque place to find yourself with the nagging suspicion of stool. While the Western style toilet may sound like the type of place you wouldn't mind finding yourself that sentiment is shared by everyone; it's not an exclusive club for foreigners, it's a public bathroom. This means that is is the most sought after location for dropping a deuce, and most public bathrooms are equipped with... one.
So when nature calls and porcelain heaven is posting no vacancies that leaves you with the alternative: a hole in the ground. Now, I'm not saying Japanese people have poor marksmanship. What I'm saying is anyone loses accuracy when you have to squat. The result is slippery soles, stench singed nose hairs, a skin crawling sensation, and the loss of the primal satisfaction attributed to relief.
Conclusion: A bathroom is a bathroom and a public bathroom is disgusting. Also, anywhere people are shitting in a hole is going to be olfactorily averse.
The festival itself isn't obscene. The whole poop factor isn't really explicit, it's just a pleasant companion to the mass consumption of mushrooms. Young mushroom distributors grin slyly, while the veterans try to maintain serious scowls and focus solely on the mushrooms themselves which becomes a difficult task after lunch time.
The mushrooms don't take long to settle and soon passing gas becomes rampant. No one is embarrassed by a toot because everyone is participating in a resounding choir of farts. I was wondering why the festival was held so far from civilization, but when I realized how inescapable a crowd of diarrheic people are it was hard to resist the joint effort the Dutch Oven an entire town.
The lines for the bathrooms begin to grow exponentially. Knowing this the festival has expertly planned entertainment centering near defecation headquarters. Why Disneyland hasn't taken a cue for this and made their lines just as enjoyable I can't fathom. While I waited I watched a couple traditional dances and a performance depicting the history of the mushroom and the festival. Although I couldn't quite understand the production I was provided with a pamphlet, in English, detailing a brief translation of the history.
The most significant highlight in the festival's history was the child born at one of the earliest celebrations A woman in the last stages of her pregnancy consumed such a vast quantity of mushrooms she backed herself up nearly to the point of bursting. After much tribulation she was able to let go of the force oppressing her insides, and upon firing realized she had loosed that which she held most precious. Spurred on by her maternal instincts she sifted, uninhibited, through the filth searching for her child. Whether by divine intervention, or more natural bonds, she was able to locate and unearth a baby born of feces. The festival proclaimed the child blessed by the most ordinary human agency.
Famously forgotten the "Shit Baby" is now only an afterthought to the Gifu mushroom festival.
The transition into winter has begun. We are starting to layer up pretty heavily. We bought a humidifier and spend most of our time under kotatsu (Google: Japanese table blanket). We're eating tons of mikans (mandarin oranges) and doing everything we can to prepare ourselves for the first winter I've ever lived in. Nobody told me it snowed in Japan.
