Down the Drain

Controls for a toilet seat bidet.

Did you think I’d said all I intended to say about my recent trip to South Korea? Wrong. I have more cultural insights to share. This week, my deep thoughts whirl around toilets.

Bidet toilets are popular in South Korea. How popular? They’re not reserved for private homes and apartments. You’ll find them in department stores, restaurants, and other public places. In short, tourists will encounter them.

They’re toilets first and bidets second. You do your business, and then, with a little button-pushing buttons, the toilet seat’s bidet attachment will spray or mist your butt, air dry it, deodorize the bowl, and more. Too much information? Here’s information you’ll appreciate: Water for the bidet attachment comes from the toilet tank, not the bowl.

Alas, the control's functions are written in Korean, which means foreigners like me must discover what each button does via trial and error. (I tried and erred many times in the name of research.) Some toilets have a mere handful of buttons; others have a dozen. A welcome winter surprise: many toilet seats are set on “warm,” and the spray is warm, too.  Buttons control the temperature and the spray’s force.

Warning: Tourists intent on testing a bidet toilet’s controls should remain seated or risk wet clothing.

Twice, bidet toilets got the best of me, and both instances taught me a lesson. I hereby resolve never to rush a dog intent on covering its poop with dirt and leaves. Why? The urge to bury (or flush) leavings is primal in the animal kingdom. The first time I couldn’t figure out how to flush one of the fancy South Korean toilets, I pushed every button as my face grew hotter and hotter. I called for help, only to discover the flush handle was located exactly where it is in the typical American toilet. What can I tell you? It never occurred to me to look there. The second time I was stumped, help arrived and instructed me to swipe my palm across a sensor on the wall of the toilet stall in order to flush. The second instance still baffles me. How was I supposed to know that?

Cities in South Korea bustle. Trains and buses are jammed during rush hour. Apartments may be small. A bidet toilet allows two or three minutes of pampering behind a closed door.  It’s a luxury that eases stress—for those who know what the controls mean.

An Addition to the Family

Hubs and I flank our SIL-to-be

When my husband and I were young and fearless, we left our home state for work, settling 1,600 miles from friends and family. The move proved a good one, children came, and we made new friends, some of whom became like family to us. Week-long visits “back home” most summers linked our girls to their aunts, uncles, and cousins. The grandparents made a point of visiting us once or twice a year.

I don’t know when I started referring to my husband and daughters as “my little family.” Does every mother make a distinction between her nuclear family and its extensions? Do I make the distinction because my husband, kids, and I don’t see our kin on a regular basis?

Because my sisters aren’t in and out of my house every week, and my brother doesn’t drop by Sunday afternoons to talk sports and politics, I’m most myself with my little family. We get each other’s jokes, tolerate each other’s bad puns, and get a kick out of stumping one another with word etymologies. (It’s more fun than it sounds.) For a while, I feared I’d built too high a wall around the four of us. Would a prospective son-in-law be able to scale it? Would he mesh with the existing group?

I’m thrilled to tell you my little family is growing. Soon, I’ll gain a son-in-law who fits like the missing piece of a puzzle. What’s more, it’s been easy to welcome him into the family, be ourselves with him, and love him.

Because Son-in-Law-to-Be and Younger Daughter are young and fearless, they’re likely to settle 1,900 miles from me and my husband. They’ll form their own little family.

I can’t wait to visit.

A Tale of Two Travelers

The world is full of opposites: early birds and night owls, introverts and extroverts, beach lovers and those who prefer to pitch a tent in the forest.  I like to plan trips; my husband doesn’t.

By “plan trips,” I mean schedule trains, planes, shuttles, and the like. I don’t schedule specific activities for each day of a vacation because I like to discover places in real time. It’s the framework of the trip--getting from Point A to Point B and on to Point C--that consumes me for weeks (or months) ahead of time. What can I tell you? I like to read train schedules.

Our recent trip to South Korea to visit our daughter provided the too-good-to-pass-up chance to spend time with my husband’s brother and his wife, who live in Kyushu, southern Japan.

From South Korea, we could, of course, have flown to southern Japan, but I like to mix up my modes of transportation.  The high-speed Beetle hydrofoil ferry from Busan, Korea to Fukuoka, Japan proved irresistible: its price compared favorably to airfare fares, the voyage took three hours, and hydrofoils represented a new-to-me means of transportation. What's more, the Internet offered up several YouTube videos of travelers’ experiences with the ferry. I booked round-trip tickets. 

Even though I have control issues enjoy planning trips, I made my husband watch at least one of those YouTube videos and thought he was on board, literally and figuratively, with my decision.

Turns out the world is full of planners and those who second-guess planners. Within a week of booking the tickets, my husband had amassed a collection of stories from people who’d had bad experiences on ferries. (The tragic sinking in April of a Korean ferry carrying high schoolers and others to Jeju Island had never left my mind, but I’d booked a different type of ferry, owned by a different company, on a different route.) Even my brother-in-law in Japan dissed ferries, and the Beetle’s Japanese.

When the day came to board, my husband, like a man resigned to his fate, quit bringing up the horror stories he’d heard. At departure, I, the person who'd booked the voyage, met with the desk clerk. When she asked whether I preferred seats on the ferry's top or bottom deck, I said “Top deck” without a second thought. I’m all about the view.

We boarded the vessel, and my husband voiced his approval of the layout, the seats, and the view. All was well for half a minute, and then the ferry, still at the dock, swayed.

“We’ll experience more sway here on the top deck,” he said.

What fresh hell is this? “You’d rather be on the bottom deck?”

“It’s more stable.”

Shoot me now. “Let’s wait until we’re underway. If the swaying bothers you then, we'll ask about moving.” Heck, if we sway like a live oak in hurricane-force winds, I’ll beg to move.

In fact, the voyage went off without a hitch or sway, and, once in Japan, my husband was the first to assure his brother the ferry had been a good choice.

On this particular trip, Mother Nature, bless her, made me look like a genius because the Mt. Aso volcano on Kyushu erupted and caused the cancellation of all flights to my brother-in-law’s city of Kumamoto.  I did, not, however, gloat. As trip-planners know, Mother Nature could have whipped up the sea and turned me and the ferry into losers.

What about you? Are you a trip planner, second-guesser, or someone who’s happy to go along for the ride?