Viewing page 67 of 240

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

LIFE IN JAPAN is a fascinating experience for the serviceman. His schooling in the customs of the country knows no recess. He continually learns new rules of behavior. Such learning will even follow him into the little room where behavior is ordinarily of secondary consideration.

Stateside toilets offer no challenge. Their structure is chairlike. But a Japanese benjo - frequently called banjo by American newcomers to Nippon - is in a class of its own. It is a small porcelain-trimmed opening in the floor. One end of it, whose only purpose is to give a person his bearings, is raised. The uninitiated faces a simple problem of facing that isn't as simple as it seems. Does one face north or south or east or west?

Actually one is supposed to face the raised end of the benjo, holding onto nothing, trusting to experience, ingenuity, or luck. But the stranger to the Japanese benjo usually ends up in any direction - his decision prompted by interior motives.


62