Emma and I are partial to a daily early morning constitutional, such as the philosopher Kant liked to take through the streets of Konigsberg back in the day. On Wednesday morning, we hadn't even travelled 100 metres from our front door when we're greeted with the following sight. One of the locals was standing in the middle of the road while her dog was, you know, going about its business. "It had to see a man about a dog," as the saying goes. Anyway, there she was with a handful of tissue, about to do her civic duty, we thought, by scooping up the evidence when the dog was finished. Well, she scooped it up, and put it in the bag, and that, we thought, was that.
But no. That wasn't that.
After depositing the droppings in the plastic bag she carried with her (what do they do with that stuff when they get it home, I wonder?), she then took a wad of tissue in one hand, lifted Fido's tail with the other, and proceeded to wipe its bum. I shit you not. I mean, this is a country in which you're not allowed to use your phone on the buses and trains. You can't hold a conversation in public above a barely audible whisper. If you have a touch of the flu or the common cold, they don't want you using a tissue. But taking that same tissue and using it to clean the stinking, fetid detritus from a dog's anus--that's OK.
I mean, what was this woman worried about? Hasn't millions of years of evolution taken care of this anal hygiene problem? Or was she worried that, in the absence of grassy lawns such as we have in Australia, Fido was going to wipe his bum on the tatami mat?
1 comment:
Mmmm...don't forget gargling and hocking up stuff in the sink in the staffroom at work is a-ok here in Japan too...sometimes I wonder. Actually most of time.
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