The Further Adventures of an Idiot Abroad (45 page)

I hit another button and water pelted my arse. I moved to see where it was coming from and it shot up my back. It was a built-in bidet with built-in dryer. It was like an automatic car wash for
the arse. It made me wonder if people ever use this part of it without having to use the toilet part. The bidet never really took off in Britain. I first saw one on holiday in Tenerife. I thought
it was his and hers toilets, the same as the his and hers sinks they have in posh bathrooms. I tend just to use the bidet on holiday as a place to clean sand off my flip flops.

I stopped hitting any more buttons on the toilet, as I was worried that it was so advanced it would end up ordering me a pizza. I’ve travelled a lot of the world now, and it’s
normally the toilet that is really basic, comprising a hole in the ground. Yet here in Japan the toilets have a higher IQ than me.

What was quite good was that it had a sink over the cistern, so the water you use to wash your hands then goes into the cistern to get used in the next flush. Quite an environmentally-friendly
good idea, except for the fact there’s energy being used to warm the bloody seat up, so not that friendly.

I left the toilet in search for invention ideas in a large shopping centre. I found plastic boxes to carry your tie in, which seemed uncalled for. I found a small portable easy-to-carry arse
cleaner. They seem obsessed with having a clean arse. At what point is it so important to have such a clean arse? I’m saying that like mine isn’t, but it is, it’s spotlessly
clean, and I don’t have a portable arse cleaner I can’t ever imagine leaving the house doing a check: ‘Right, wallet, phone, keys . . . arse cleaner.’

I did find some good little gadgets though that included a crisp picker-upper. It meant you could eat crisps without getting grease on your hands, which is good if you’re playing games on
an iPad or something. And I also bought some little shoes and mittens you put on a baby’s hands and feet, so that they can mop the floor while crawling around. I saw these years ago in a
book, but they were designed for cats back then. I bought them for a friend who’s recently had a kid. I think it’s a good idea, as kids don’t become useful around the house for
years, but these change that. I also bought an everlasting ear bud, which was really good but have since lost.

There was also an aisle of small pets for people who wanted more than a fifteen-minute stroke of a cat in a cafe. They sold Triops. They’re so tiny I really don’t see how you can
class them as pets. I stared at the glass bowl for about five minutes before I managed to see the small creature. You’d be better off buying an apple, letting it go off and breeding some
fruit flies.

I did buy myself a pet. A stag beetle. They’re strange things. Almost dinosaur-like with their huge antlers. They’re really popular with kids. So popular, that as well as selling
them in shops they also sell them in vending machines. Again, a bit like the portable arse cleaner, why sell them in vending machines? Why can’t people just wait until the shops open?
What’s the urgency in buying a beetle? It cost 500 yen, which was about £4. I’m not sure if that’s the going rate or not, as I’ve never bought an insect. I thought
I’d play with it for a while and then release it into the wild when I left Tokyo.

By the end of my shopping I’d had a few ideas for my invention.

I’d keep thinking.

It was time to catch a bullet train and head towards Mount Fuji. Bullet trains are really good and run to the second. They are big and roomy, and they feel more like the service you get on a
plane with regular drinks and food served from a trolley. I really couldn’t fault it. At home we like to complain about the trains as much as we do about the weather. It was a relaxing
journey, as everyone respected each other and didn’t make any noise. The fact we have a Quiet Coach on our trains says it all. I had my last bag of Frazzles using my crisp picker-upper. It
worked well.

Now, you’d think with all the travelling I’ve been doing the past couple of years that I would be able to handle anything food-wise. I have got better at trying new things, but the
food in Japan was tough, especially if you’re not a lover of fish, which I’m not. I actually took to raiding the Strepsils from the medical bag, which are designed to soothe and numb
sore throats, I found that they knocked out my taste buds enough for me to get through the odd necessary meal, so sucked on one ten minutes before the challenge. Not a normal aperitif, is it?

They served fish constantly in Japan for breakfast, lunch and tea. I think even penguins might have a more varied diet. I don’t know what worried me more each day, being woken up by
tremors or going down to face breakfast. There was so much fish on the breakfast tray you’d think there would be one piece that I enjoyed, but there never was. Facing a sea slug at any time
of the day isn’t easy, but first thing in the morning, I think even Bear Grylls would struggle. I ate very little during this trip. Everyone else was happy eating from bento boxes, which are
nice little boxes with small compartments with different fish parts in them. The way it was displayed was like a piece of art or an expensive box of Thornton’s chocolates, except instead of a
coffee cream in dark chocolate, it’s a squid bollock wrapped in fish arse. It’s not a meal. It’s bait.

I was taken to try funazushi. It’s a delicacy, apparently. Whenever someone says this I always expect some dish that’s bloody stupid. Traditions seem to keep idiotic things alive. I
met a local man called Shin in a restaurant. He brought out the so-called delicacy in a wooden box. I removed the lid. It didn’t look too bad. I’d been faced with worse most days since
I’d been in Japan. I was expecting it to be alive, what with it having a lid on, as I’ve seen stuff on the internet where restaurants in Japan serve live octopus. I mean, why? Not only
does it seem cruel, but why pay for that in a restaurant? The chef has done nowt to it.

Shin explained that funazushi is an ancient preparation of sushi that involves packing a fish with lots of salt, then fermenting it for up to six years. Six years it had been dead, and
there’s me thinking it was going to be alive. I reckon this fish’s great-great-great-great-grandsons have been eaten by now, and yet this one is still waiting to be munched on. It could
qualify as an exhibit on
Antiques Roadshow
.

I put it in my mouth. At first it didn’t seem that bad until I bit into it and the taste was released, and it’s a taste that should never be released. I can’t believe anyone
likes this. I think this dish is only still around ’cos the Japanese are too polite to say it tastes like shite. I know they say fish numbers are low, but if the only option is eating rotten
old dead ones I’d rather not bother. It was like my taste buds had been mugged. Within 30 seconds it came back up, and I had to rush into the Japanese garden where I was sick on a bonsai
tree.

I got to the hotel and called Stephen.