Toilets

My head is still banging, but most all else has cleared up, so I thought I should return to work...so I did.

Anyway I suppose I don't really have much to say about today, other than it's snowing again, not laying but it's blowing all over the place.

So I wanted to talk about the toilets a little while a go and I think it may have come to mind again after yesterday...well anyway many Westerners that have come to Korea have noted about this, on various blogs and what-not, but I thought I would throw my two penneth in regardless.

In the west we are rather used to our porcelain thrones.  They seem to make sense to use, by sitting we make it a less arduous ordeal.  Some people in fact seem to enjoy that time alone to sit and read...well whatever.  However I doubt that would ever be the case in Korea.  There are no porcelain thrones, no there are sort of dugouts.

This is a rather nice looking version I have to say, this is just one I stole from the net though.

But there it is.  It took me some time to work out what I was supposed to do.  Some of you may think it is fairly obvious looking at it, but once you are in front of one you have to work out how to angle yourself, how low to get and where to stand and what you do with your pants.  Yes that's right this is a squat toilet.  When I first came across one I was in Busan and I thought it was some sort of archaic toilet, but no, it is common practice.  The only place you are going to find a western toilet is in a western restaurant modern accommodation and there should be at least one in each school, generally to service the disabled students.

Well I did not know this initially, so one time when I was fairly desperate I wandered through most of the school and all I could find were these weird squat toilets, finally I was led to the single western toilet in the school.  It was completely out of the way through a dark corridor and apparently almost no-one knows about it.

Well I guess that covers that bit, but there are two more things of note in public restrooms.  First is that the guys are not shy in the slightest, frequently they will not shut the doors leading to a toilet or if they do they have clear glass in them, so really what's the point?  This is often why I will retreat to the cubicles.  I mean I'm already the one to stare at but I have no interest in random people staring at my cock while I try to take a piss.

The second thing is that there are still quite a few unisex toilets here in Korea.  However they are not like the ones that sometimes turn up in the UK.  Sometimes in the UK there will be a unisex toilet, but it would be full of cubicles.  No here in Korea it means there are urinals for the guys and stalls for the gals.  But the girls have to push past the guy taking a piss to go to the toilet.

I don't know if it's just me, but I still like some privacy when using the toilet.


*Addition - There are a couple of inconveniences I forgot to mention:

1.  In many places the toilet paper is outside the restroom area and you must either bring it in yourself or in fact pay for some, so if I go traveling I take a whole roll with me.
2. If you find yourself using a squat toilet you are expected NOT to flush the paper down it, yes that's right.  They have a waste paper bin to the side of you, often without a lid.  So you've most likely been sat next to the remains of crap while you have uncomfortably had a go.  Not pleasant in the least.  In fact they seem to do the same thing here at school, even with the western toilet.