Not everyone lived in government housing around Tokyo.  Not everyone wanted to.  Some families lived "on the economy," as it was termed, or the "rice paddies," or just the "paddies," because you were usually living near .. guess what?  If you did it right, it was a plunge into the Japanese lifestyle full bore.  When we arrived in Japan, my dad was stationed at Fuchu and we lived in a small town called Chofu, in a complex of six houses rented just to Americans.  So much for living the lifestyle.  It was an American style-house, but we were surrounded by Japanese living in their traditional homes, some on dirt roads that wouldn't be paved for several years.  Tatami mats on the floor and removing your shoes as you entered, sliding rice paper doors (is there no privacy at ALL?) and no conception whatever of the term "my own room" that Americans took for granted.

I made several Japanese teenage friends who spoke English and was invited to their homes.  At night, comforters were rolled out and the living room became the bedroom.  What was such a shock to me .. and still is to this day .. are Japanese bathrooms.  The toilets (benjos) are just holes in the floor.  No seats.  Nothing at all to sit on.  Just squat and do it.  When we lived in France, I marveled at the fact that they had TWO side by side; of course, I was too young to understand the need for a bidet and had to be told it was NOT to be used as a drinking fountain.  But to stare down at a bare hole in the floor in Japan .. what if you missed?  How do you balance yourself?  Do you put one hand on the wall and form a triangle, with your pants as far away as you could?  And what is the deal with these little single sheets of toilet paper?  Where's the roll?

One thing you do learn as a military brat is how to be a chameleon, how to fit in almost anywhere.  And that means not insulting anyone in your host country .. period.  There was a cartoon of the period that said it all: "Grin and Bear It."  The Japanese were the most polite people I had ever come into contact with, and it does rub off on you.  So how did I resolve my bathroom etiquette dilemma?  I made some phony excuse of something I had forgotten at home, ran back there, did my biz and returned .. with much bowing to excuse my manners.  Did they figure it out?  I'll never know.
 

	Now to the rice paddies.  There was one fifty feet from our house.  When I first saw it, I thought, "Neat!"  That was the last time I ever thought that.  When I would walk over to look, all I saw was a huge lake of water, but no rice was in sight.  Planted and growing, I was told.  Farmers in wide straw hats were wading through the muddy water and tending whatever was there.  A month later came the real shocker.  The road in front of our house was paved, but there was a concrete trough, three feet deep, running on both sides for miles and miles.
Farmer with honey buckets.  Troughs line the road, just full of ...	What I discovered was that everything from the Japanese toilets (sorry, benjos) dumped into these troughs.  The smell was not so bad in the late winter, but come the hot weather, it was unbelievable!  There, for all to see and smell, was the whole street's crap! But, that's not the worst!  I watched as the farmers from the adjacent rice field came over to the troughs with two large buckets attached to a six foot wooden pole that they carried around their neck.

Then, they took long-handled scoops (I would hope so! Is this where "wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole" came from?) and dipped into the raw sewage and plopped it into the buckets.  Then, they returned to their field and commenced to spread it all over their budding rice. "It's efficent re-use of resources," I was told.

  I was 15.  It was gross!  And what do they call that stick-and-buckets contraption the farmers carry?  A "honey bucket!"  Honey??  Right!  There were, of course, entrepreneurs who did it in a big way, scooping lots and lots of "honey" from troughs everywhere, loading it into large tanks on trucks and selling it to farmers who had better things to do in life.  They carried their putrid loads in, what else? .. "honey wagons."  Now, we have a huge industry in the U.S. that cleans out portable toilets with .. honey wagons.  That had to have been started by an ex-GI who was stationed in Japan.

Please, dad, can we move on-base?  And the closer to Tokyo, the better.  After all, I was 15, and the bright lights and big city were a siren song calling to me.  Get me outta the paddies!