One thing most foreigners are surprised to see when they come to Japan is men urinating in public. Taxi drivers, salarymen and just plain drunks can be seen standing against a wall, a hedge or over a grid in public streets any time of day or night, peeing. I call it the Grand Pee.

On the island where I live, men are constantly peeing off the piers as well as off fishing boats in the port. When your house is on the port like mine is, this gives a new meaning to the idea of a picture window. Every Thanksgiving, my dinner guests are entertained by these men outside my living room window peeing, oblivious to the foreign crowd amassed just 10 meters away.

Indeed, it seems like Japan is obsessed with peeing. Even Western-style toilets come with instructions on the lids. What were they thinking -- people might jump in? Perhaps the instructions are there because Japanese have always had an aversion -- and rightly so -- to putting their naked butt down on the same place someone else already has sat on. Therefore, I think we should get rid of the ugly word "butt" altogether and just call it the "upper hamstrings." The Japanese have only warmed to the Western style toilet recently, with the advent of heated toilet seats.