Like Nobody's "Business"

photo attribution below

Today we are going to be sophisticated and talk about cross-cultural communication issues. If you can't handle this level of conversation, go do something else... pat a cat or something. 

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For the sophisticated rest of you, this picture on the left here is of a old-style, Japanese toilet, the humble "squat pot".  That's what I call it.
In Japanese it's called 便所 (benjo), a word which is actually rarely in use today.
Why?
The word itself makes you want to crinkle your nose in a kind of Pavlovian reaction to imagined smells and icky incrustations.

In days of yore, many of these were not flush toilets – as this rather modern, spiffy one is – but rather "drop pots" where the day's "passings" would be collected in a large tank under the floor.  In addition, public toilets were often messy. People would miss, especially on moving trains and while drunk on their ways home in the dark.
The use of this toilet is straightforward. You enter the toilet cubicle, putting on the toilet slippers (yes, there are separate slippers for the toilet in Japan, but not in public toilets). You face the raised, rounded part at the end nearest the toilet paper in the picture. You pull down your pants and squat over the long part with the hole in it to do your "business". Yes, you do need to be able to squat all the way down. 
Apparently this is a very healthy way to relieve yourself, preventing such scary events as defecation syncope (fainting while pooping) and even death due to cardiovascular complications.
Who knew?!
Everyone in Japan knows how to use toilets like these, especially back when these toilets were more common. 
Everyone, no exceptions.
Nowadays the toilets with "bells and whistles" prevail, but in the old days these humble "squat pots" were more widespread. You can still find them in rural areas: in small out-of-the-way parks, old railroad stations, remote ski areas, and traditional Japanese inns. 
Which brings me to the cultural conundrum. 
Years ago we visited Naruko, a regionally famous hot spring village near Sendai. It was a typical rural, hot spring community – a little worn and funky, but still retaining some old-time charm. The inn where we stayed was one of the cheaper ones, offering more rustic facilities, including a shared toilet – like the one pictured above – at the end of the hall. Very few foreigners came to that inn and no other foreigners were there when we checked in. Our room was a traditional Japanese inn-room with tatami mat floors, a low table with sitting cushions on the floor, and roll out bedding to sleep on.
The morning after our arrival, I went down the hall to the toilet, rattled open the sliding door and went in, only to discover that someone had been in there before me and had used the toilet in such a way so as to leave a rather large poo, decorating the round, upraised part of the potty (see picture above). 
There is only one way to make this happen and that is to use the toilet incorrectly.
To accomplish this, you need to squat, facing the wrong way.  Next you have to not get into a full-squat position because of the upraised round part below you (don't try this at home kids). Basically, what we are talking about here is something NOBODY would do!
I could hear the brain-workings of the inn-staff member when she discovered this poo. 
It does have a compelling logic.
1. Clearly no Japanese would do this.  ↩
2. Duh. ↩
3. A foreigner would do this. ↩
4. Those foreigners in room #2 (us) are the only foreigners around. ↩
5. Therefore, they did it. 
So we were faced with a difficult choice. We could report it or not report it. (Cleaning it up never occurred to us that early in the morning.) If we didn't report it, obviously the staff would conclude that we did it (see logic above). If we DID report it, the staff might still conclude that we did it and were trying to cover our tracks (so to speak) by reporting it "innocently".
We decided on the latter approach and reported to the staff that someone had used the toilet improperly.
They are probably still laughing about it, "Remember those foreigners who came in here and pooped ON the toilet instead of IN it?"
"Yes! Ha ha ha! And that huge guy also used the sitting cushions to make his bedding longer. I bet HE did it. I have never seen such a big poo before!"
"Yeah! Those foreigners...!"
"Hee hee hee hee!" 

Which just goes to show that even if "when in Rome you 'do' as the Romans 'do'", you can still get caught with your pants down (so to speak).

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 The image above is a Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons image from the user Chris 73 and is freely available at //commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JapaneseSquatToilet.jpg under the creative commons cc-by-sa 3.0 license.