TOILET WARS

Building a new house can get one into strange places here in Japan, where not long ago I went to the toilet store. Having spent my formative years in America I had come to believe, in the general American way, that a toilet is, well, pretty much what a toilet always has been: a white thing with whirly water, or maybe sometimes lately it's pink or green or another color; but at bottom, it's just a toilet. Judging from what I saw at the Kyoto toilet store though, Japan does not share this view; in fact, the birthplace of karaoke appears poised to lead the world in toiletry as well. The salesman started off by showing us all the traditional toilets, but I could tell his heart wasn't really in those conventionally shaped sewage swallowers, that he had some big climactic surprise in store for us as he slowly worked us through the store, drawing us inevitably toward a prominently curtained booth in the back, the kind of curtain the new model Cadillac used to drive out of every year at the auto show, and when we were at just the right distance the curtains parted, colored lights went on and music made for Moses came out of the ceiling and up from the floor. There was some kind of object in the booth; some kind of high-tech object, reminded me of the alien hiding on the dashboard of that spaceship Sigourney thought she was all alone and safe at last in. The salesman pulled something out of his pocket and pressed it; there was a rising movement in the booth: it was the entry hatch to the Toiletship Enterprise. Beam me up, Scotty. "And if you're male..." the salesman said, and pushed again, and the lower lid of the Enterprise rose slowly and majestically into the bathroom atmosphere in readiness for Captain Kirk's call of nature; there was also a wall unit with a lot of buttons on it to run the Enterprise from, when you've just gotta boldly go where no man has gone before, and for programming the toilet action or firing on the enemy or putting up a force field while you're at it, there were buttons for so many things, and a little panel that flipped out from the side that you could program in mid-battle, and a jet spray, and drier and heater and various other anti-Klingon functions, so I asked the salesman would it get me and my crew safely back to the home planet. He was not amused. His look implied: do you want to spring for a true battle station, or get captured by the first pirate toilet that comes your way? No warp speed for us, though; all we really need is a hole in the ground. They'll never find us there.