While pondering life, love and such-like in my usual thinking spot, my thoughts, once again, turned to that with which I am more fascinated than any other subject — the art of relieving oneself. My attentions were brought to this fine matter by a student of mine a few days ago (yes, someone has deemed fit to set me loose on a class of meek, studious young Asians looking to learn English. Bad English, I hasten to add) who was looking rather, well, pained over the course of the day, and also particularly flushed in the face. After the day ended, I asked her what the hell the fucking problem was as I am very professional in the workplace, and this juicy little piece of knowledge has now been passed on to yours truly.

In Japan, the basic, everyday toilet has been replaced with a much fancier device, one with water jets for 'super dual-outlet happy cleaning', plus a variety of extra features, such as a drier, heated seats, massage functions, and automatic lid opening and flushing. This is not reserved for the rich either, as almost two-thirds of homes in Japan now feature just such a device. Now, I'm sure this is not breaking news to a lot of you. What had me fascinated, or more fascinated, was the revelation of the 'Otohime' that is more often than not found sitting right beside the lavatory.

Now, 'Otohime' means 'Sound Princess', and is a small device that sits next to the toilet. It popped its little head up in the 80's after the revelation that the vast majority of Japanese women are mortified at the prospect of taking a piss while others are present in a bathroom for fear of them hearing their horse-like yellow water jets. Therefore, to hide this absolutely vile, disgusting noise, many of the fairer sex would sit and constantly flush the toilet so no-one outside of the cubicle could possibly guess what was happening in there. Genius.

However, as this was not the moist eco-friendly way of hiding one’s slash-sounds, who better than the Japanese to come up with the ultimate of all gadgets? They devised a hands free device that, with a wave past the motion-sensor, produces a sound almost identical to that of a toilet being flushed. Hey Presto! People no longer think you're hosing down the ceramics in the toilet cubicle, thus allowing you to maintain your dignity while doing the dirty.

Marvelous, I know. Only found in female toilets, apparently, as in Japanese culture the bigger and louder your piss, the cooler a man is. Fact. So, getting back to my student's problem. She had been distinctly unable to relieve herself unless the toilet at the school was completely empty before she took her little seat, and being a busy school, this was not a common occurrence. Her home-stay situation wasn't making things any better, as it only had a low-standard regular western loo, lacked any flashing lights, book-stands or ass-warming technology, so she had, in a stroke of genius, simply been refusing to take number ones. Now mock her not, this is obviously someone who has been through a terrible ordeal- can you imagine the disgrace of someone else knowing you are having a pee, or even worse, a poo-poo? Neither can I, thank the Lord.

In any event, after I'd sat the poor girl down and called the police to call their attention to the injustice of it all, I began to think about the sub-standard toilets and, more so, the sub-standard toilet paper we have to put up with in the rest of the world, outside of Japan. Today's rant started in the supermarket after I left school, head swimming in visions of a Japanese teenager's bladder exploding on the rush-hour bus home, where I’d been trying to choose a suitable roll of paper to be decimated by the girlfriend in a matter of seconds (c'mon girls, we fellas know you wrap half the fucking roll round your hand to wipe away a solitary droplet) as if it had never been there in the first place. Now, don't get me wrong, but toilet paper is wrong. It's all wrong, everything about it. 'Smear fecal matter on oneself until you can't see it on paper anymore, ooooooh, how clean and hygienic you are sir!' It's total bullshit.

As these frustrations started to come to the boil, my gaze in the supermarket rested on the packaging for said rolls, and, lo and behold, what did I see? The answer, that's what I saw. Nearly 73% (give or take) of the assorted brands had, adorned on the plastic packaging, a picture of a really cute, fluffy little puppy. Now, it may be the same in your respective countries, but we, the wonderfully anal English, have been subjected to at least a thousand years of TV adverts showing a cute little puppy stealing some bog-roll from an unsuspecting shitter, to much gaiety and mirth from the rest of the household. I just thought it was part of the always-successful simple sales technique to use cute things to sell products, but now I believe I am mistaken.

It's not the cute dog = nice paper that they're selling to us idiots, it's the fact that deep down, when we're at our lowest point, sitting their on the khazi, we all want to wipe our nether regions on a puppy. Fact. It's on the packaging to represent the softness of the paper, right? Well, if this is how soft the paper is, we're going to use it, right? Wrong. They are using mind tricks to lead us into believing that when we wipe our dirty little poo-holes, we're doing it on the fur of a tiny, helpless cute doggy, who's only purpose in life is to keep our crevices clean and comfortable, and not only that, but it's the best thing for us! Yes, they probably deserve it, I mean the little fuckers do always run off with the toilet paper, and it's pretty annoying, but what I now believe is that within a few years, all of the leading bathroom-tissue manufacturers are going to cut us off from the source, stop the paper coming our way, hike the prices way up and then give us neatly packaged, soft as a feather, perfumed, naturally moistened puppy fur for all of our toilet requirements, and we're going to take it, we'll fucking love it! The job's already halfway done, I mean when I see a puppy the first thing I always think of is how soft it looks, and how the arch of its spine would fit so neatly up… but I digress.

Anyway, you heard it here first. Mark my words and heed this warning. This is our last chance to defeat evil by boycotting all toilet paper, especially the ones that are prostituting the sweet little baby doggies to us all. Furthermore, we must never stroke another puppy and comment on its softness ever again, and, as proven so possible by my wonderful student, we must never, never indulge in another shameful act in our little white cubicles again without the help of our favourite little 'sound-princess.'