Toilet Humor?

Amtrak would have some angry (not to mention irregular) customers with those toilet facilities. I once had a very unproductive experience trying to use one of those squat-type johns on the JNR Sakura Express enroute from Tokyo to Sasebo. Hard to relax and take care of business with the train lurching along at 70+ mph. Little did I know (until I departed the train in Sasebo) that there was a western style sit-down toilet in the car's outer vestibule.  

Hey, Railride, That is funny.  It brings back some fond memories, too.  Back in 1967, I was a young Army PFC, just out of school at APG, MD.  I was assigned to Camp Carrol, Korea.  This was a wheel and track rebuild depot back then.  A week after I arived, some of us got a weekend pass to go sightseeing and we went with a buck sgt. that had been there about 6 months.  The depot was surrounded by a village ( the ville) and we hit every bar there, I think.  When I went to the bathroom, imagine my surprise when there were guys and b-girls in the same room.  The girls were squating and the guys standing, side by side.  Talk about culture shock.

I belive you are correct that they designed what they knew, and had no idea what a western toilet looked like.

When I was in the Air Force, I went to Thiland, I heard them called bomb sites.

My dad fresh out of OCS stopped off in Tokyo on his way to Korea to take command of a engineering company building airstrips for the Air Force in 1951. He finally found the bathroom in the hotel Tokyo and there was a woven basket in the corner and a tiled trench in the floor. He didn't know what to do so he straddled the trench and let fly.
He said it stopped up all the pipes and he had Japanese running every where.
I'm like you guys I don't think they made the toilet that low by accident .

David

YOU OUGHT BTO GO CANCUN,MEXICO-3 INCHES OF WATER IN THE TOILET-AFTER DRINKING THAT XXX BEER AND TACOS-YOU CAN IMAGINE THOSE TOILETS WERE NOT MADE FOR AMERICOS-I MET A BOSS WHO WORKED IN SAUDI ARABIA-THEY HAVE A BATHROOM WITH A HOLE IN THE FLOOR AND YOU SQUAT STAnding up over it-how do they read their ogaugerr mags over there.

That is too funny!

I remember when I lived in Singapore, and when I travelled to China and Japan, I saw them.  I would actually hold "it" for an entire night's dinner and drinks until I got back to hotel just so I wouldn't have to use the holes in the floor!

Good times...

Thanks,

Mario

Why would anyone think that the squat-apparatus is a good idea? I mean, seriously?

I've never sat foot (or anything else) in a US outhouse, but even that was a far better

example of engineering than a hole in the floor. The outhouse predates Western

wealth, too, so poverty is no excuse; besides, what is Asia doing with all that money

we send them?

Holes in the floor; how tacky. 

Oh, boy...traveling in southern France in the hill towns, where my brother had been

a few years before, and he had referred derisively to the facilities as "two pads and a pit", because of a hole bordered by shoe shaped pads, did not make happy woman companion.  Had the above mentioned culture shock in a bar there when I found that

it wasn't "his and hers" but "theirs".  More of the same in a city in South America where the Indian population, of either gender, seemed to find any corner of an alley,

or bank of a ditch convenient.

I have built models of two story mining town johnny houses, but have never understood how they worked, and some of the mine boarding houses up above

Silverton had four story ones, like an elevator shaft on the side of the building...no clue how they worked......I always have thought I'd want to climb to the top floor, to be safe...

Funny coincidence kind of, I was just thinking the other morning that my OGR mags in the basket in the downstairs restroom need to be upgraded.  Need to rotate the stock.  I always start at the same place and end at the same place.  Coffee helps.

If any one has toured the Kaufman Fallingwater House southeast of Pittsburgh designed by Frank Llyod Wright (who was wrong with his engineering, but thats another OT subject), I recall (been a very LONG time ago) the docsent said that it initially had the squat toilet, later changed to conventional type.  Supposedly the Kaufman doctor said the squat position was easier on the body's plumbing (true or not).

Ran into the same thing while stationed at Kwang Ju AB, South Korea in 1977. The same things went on in the bars outside the base, but sometimes the girls would help you do your thing. Oh, the good old days.

We traveled from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur by train when my daughter was about 7. She had a "thing" about toilets. The toilet on the train was a normal toilet except for the fact you could see the track passing underneath. Needless to say, she refused to go, even though she was busting, for a further 6 hours. When we arrived at KL station she was nearly crippled with pain and my wife forced her to go into the station toilet, on yes, a squat toilet. I think it scared her for life.

I must say that y'all certainly make traveling in the Far East sound a real attractive proposition. 

Curt

Just out of interest, and to see if this was a common feature, I removed the roof on one of my LBG coaches (I have LGB in my garden.). Not only is there a proper toilet, but it has a functioning lifting lid on it. And you can't even see this when the roof is on. 

Nicole.

Ah the great German efficiency.It's a wonder those LGB cars don't have toilet paper on a roll.
It's not just different in Asia . I went to a public restroom in Prague. The attendant ( yea there they have attendants) Handed me 2 sheets of brown  paper like the paper from a shopping bag. I walked over to where the toilets are and the stalls are only about 4 feet high.
I sat down and in came this woman she sat down beside me and said "Ahoy"(hello) Well that was a first and a last. I had a terrible time pulling my pants back up in a crouching position not that she couldn't see everything I was doing. From then on I made sure when I went it was at my cousins house.

David

Attendants is the one thing I hate about York.  True in Europe and G.B., as well as

collecting a fee.  Probably explains why about any grove of trees on the side of the

road that you stop at in France and Germany has toilet paper on the ground, not that

I, too,  didn't have to "take to the trees" there and in Mexico.  We live in a fastidious

society (and I prefer it!)

Lineman at the power company. When your out in the middle of no where and you gotta go? Well when someone asks if a Bear @#&* in the woods?....... I don't know but I do
Standard truck stocking procedure. First door back drivers side, top shelf- relief on a roll. See ya when you get back and don't get snake bit.
You guys that work in a office just don't know what your missing

David

Well this whole thread is going into the toilet, with the way everyone is so "potty" mouthed!!

I like the European public restrooms that have attendants.  They are usually very clean and well worth the dollar tip!

Jim

It really is that simple and basic. Never had to avail myself of it, but my bandleader kept a roll in the band van. American hangups about normal bodily functions have never made sense to me, especially when they manifest themselves in a bizarre lack of public restrooms.

Pete

The restroom was clean very clean in fact. I didn't like the kroger shopping bag toilet paper @ two 6 inch square sheets or the lady sitting beside me.
It cost me one Czech dollar so about 20 cents. I'd have much rather gone in the woods.

When passenger service was hot and heavy living next to the tracks must have been a very stinky place although I never remember my dad saying anything about it?
and they lived right next to the B&O mainline from 1933 till 1947.
Here's a label for the straight thru to the rails design.

David

I told a story on The Forum a while back of my experience sitting in the engineer's seat on the Adirondack Scenic's F units, but I'll kepp it short.

We were running southbound, toward Utica, and my friend and I were in the cab, when my friend pronounced he had to relieve himself... Without blinking an eye, the Old Head told him to go out the cab door, and the it was the first door on the left!

Ha!  I ope we didn't run though anyone's back yard while he was watering the forest.

Thanks,

Mario

After reading this thread, I wonder how many people are going to check their passenger cars to see what's in the restroom.

IT MAKES YOU LOVE THE USA-PORCELIN THRONES AND OGAUGE MAGAZINE GO TOGETHER

-GOD BLESS THE USA.MY MOM REMEMBERS OUTHOUSES IN PHILLY IN THE 20'S.IT WAS BAD IN WINTER DARK AND COLD-THEY USED A THICK SEARS CATALOG FOR YOU KNOW WHAT-SHE COMPLAINED ABOUT THE GLOSSY PAGES-I ASKED HER what she thought was the best invention made since her birth-1922-indoor toilet that flushed-she lived in a good section of philly too-so mth and lionel send out those catalogs.

Funny what you get used to. My uncles converted a bedroom into a bathroom for my grand ma. They did it as a present for her but when we were visiting we always used the out house till she got the bathroom (1970) . There was a flashlight hanging by the door on a nail , no catalogs she had toilet paper but it was just a given if you had to go then it was out the front door turn left 300 feet down the path and if your eyes missed it your nose wouldn't.

She told us she was perfectly fine with it . Guess that's why she never spent the money to put a bath in.

Oh and I aint popin the lid off any of my cars to look to see whats in there.
I'd be afraid one of those little O scale people didn't do a courtesy flush.

David

My grandfather's farm was up on a hill over looking Southern Ry. tracks, and there

were two outhouses, one "his" and another two-holer, "hers" and kids', next to the chicken house, which meant for night time visitors, a barefoot tramp through chicken droppings in the dark to access.  The Sears catalog was there (recycling isn't new) and so was the hoe, for snakes like chicken eggs, and the cool of the outhouse.  And if you didn't think my grandmother was spry for her age, you shoulda caught the commotion when she found a snake either place. Unless the snake was one of those

called a "blue racer" and had the pedal to the metal, his condition was terminal.  My

grandfather would catch them alive and dump them in his corn crib, and then, of

course, mice and rats would vacate promptly.

My grandfather died in the mid 1960's, but with all the other appliances, TV, etc., they

never put in a bathroom.

Try the Boom Boom Room in NYC at the end of the Elevated Walkway on the west side.  The toilets on the top floor have floor to ceiling glass to look out over the city while you are doing your business.  

Also, in Nam back in 67-68 we went behind a shrub, dug our hole with an entrenching tool and did our business.  Got used to it after a while, privacy only a bit important. ONe time a guy went outside of a temp perimeter and coming back in set off a trip flare! Scared the rest of it out of him!  Fortunately it was already daylight and no one opened up on him.  

Coloradohirailer. This should be in a novel somewhere. I wish you'd tell us more because I was disappointed when I reached the end, here, and found myself looking for more!

Frank

About a decade ago, I spent two weeks in Turkey. In that time, I became pretty proficient at the "turkish toilet". What I never could quite get used to, though, was the hose they provided in lieu of T.P.

Trivia: they may be "turkish toilets", but the sultan's john in the old Topkapi palace was a regular sit-down affair!

Many years ago I was talking to a retired Virginia Blue Ridge conductor.  The line ran along a very isolated section of river, no road.

His caboose had no "facility" on board.  One day he got a definite need for one.  His only choice was to stand on the rear deck and hold on to the rear railing.

While so occupied he happened to glance over to the river.  There, fly fishing, was a good looking woman.  Their eyes met.  He managed to hang on while doing the only proper thing under the circumstances.  He waved to her.  She waved back.

Tony