Roland the Rat - 1

       Two weeks of torrential monsoon rains had pursued us relentlessly across the Indonesian island of Java. Finally, at the township of Malang and with floodwaters up to our thighs, we waded to the bus station and made haste to the port of Ketapang to catch the ferry boat to Bali; we needed a refuge to dry out.

Within a couple of days we discovered a perfect Balinese haven at the picturesque artist colony of Ubud where we rested up for a couple of weeks:
A well-built bamboo cottage in the garden of a local architect was just what we needed: it had a thatched roof, elaborately carved gilded doors, cool, white tiled floors, and a covered veranda. 

The rock-built wall of the enclosed, alfresco bathroom was open to the sky, and draped with lush, tropical plants from which a small waterfall poured forth as a shower – it was straight off the pages of House & Garden magazine.  All this, plus breakfast, afternoon tea and the services of a houseboy for just $7 per day. It was too good to be true!

We soon settled into lazy days of reading on the veranda, drawing and painting the verdant jungle view around our haven and generally enjoying our good fortune.

On the second morning, I got up and went drowsily into our designer bathroom, lifted the lid of the rose pink toilet and felt my eyes somersault and do a double flip. Silently, I closed the lid again.

I stood and stared incredulously at that throne of contemplation for what seemed like several minutes, waiting for my brain and my eyes to connect. Had I seen what I thought I had seen? or was I still drunk with sleep?

My eyes were beginning to ache from not blinking. Confused, I tentatively lifted the lid again and took another peek, then gently lowered it again.

Zombie-like, I walked back into the bedroom and passed Jean en route: 

“I shouldn’t use the loo this morning if I were you.” I said as casually as possible. 

“Why not?” she asked. 

“Well, Roland the rat is taking his morning bath.” I replied. 

Jean, bless her, knows me far too well to take the slightest notice of my black sense of humour, particularly first thing in the morning.

What should I do, should I...? Too late! A blood-curdling scream, enough to wake the whole village and half the cemetery, emanated from the bathroom. Jean rushed out glaring daggers at me. We then both fell into a heap of nervous laughter at the absurd truth of the matter … we had a rat calmly doing the dog paddle in the toilet bowl.

We had a situation that obviously needed to be deazlt with. Our options, as I saw it, were:   

1.Treat it as a problem, complain like mad, demand our money back and leave our little paradise. 

2.Treat it as an inconvenience and get the houseboy to deal with it, or 

3.Interrupt Roland’s bathing routine, hand him a towel and tell him to sod off!

Being ever the diplomat I chose the middle course, then watched our totally bewildered houseboy spend half an hour trying unsuccessfully to fish Roland out. 

Eventually, in desperation, he wrapped his hand in a cloth and tried to grab poor old 'Roland, but in doing so, found he had pulled his tail off and in the ensuing panic had pressed the flush-lever. The now tail-less Roland had disappeared into the depths of the sewerage system and presumably out of our lives.

Whew!

Later that morning I completed my ablutions, during which I sat on the loo reading a chapter of a travel book. I then washed my hands and halfway through cleaning my teeth I heard: “Squeak, squeak.” I thought it was Jean trying to get her own back on me so I ignored her … brush, brush …

“Squeak, squeak.”

… splash, splash … “OK Jean, I know it’s you,” I said and turned around to find her, but she was not there, I could see she was outside busy painting the scenery.

“Oh, no! I don’t believe it.” I thought, and gingerly lifted the lid to the toilet … there was Roland, back again as large as life doing the breaststroke with what I swear was a silly grin on his face!

“My God!” I thought. “I have just escaped a fate worse than death.” Had I dallied three minutes longer on the throne, Roland could have grabbed me by the ‘dingly-danglies’ and made his escape. I slammed the lid shut, broke out in a cold sweat, threw myself onto the bed and watched the room swim round and round.  I swore Roland and Jean were in collusion. 

I called Jean. She called the houseboy. He called the owner who then called a crowd of neighbours and a passing ice-cream vendor to help solve the problem.

After much debate and disagreement, we ‘solved the inconvenience’ by using a deadly concoction of bleach and poison. Roland sensed we were up to something sinister, he did a back-flip and disappeared, never to stick his head around the bend again, leaving us to enjoy our little paradise. 
 Mind you, I gave up reading on the loo and took to hovering a good three inches above the seat … just in case. One can never be too careful. 
Written by:- Roy Romsey

  To read about Roy's other encounter with animals when in the USA.
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Bath time in Japan - 2

   Attempting to go native in Japan was never going to be easy. It had taken a long time to find a local family who not only had a self-contained 'furnished aparto' within their traditional Japanese wooden home, but were also prepared to rent it to a Gaijin Sensei – a foreign-devil teacher from ‘En'grand’.

Home Sweet Home

    The first-floor apartment was minimalist to say the least. It had just a low coffee table, a large wall-hanging scroll featuring a brush-painted floral arrangement, a sink with a single gas ring and a screened alcove in which to store clothes and bedding in cardboard boxes.

    My two rooms were separated by sliding paper screens, each with soft thatched tatami floors, honey - coloured timber ceilings, white walls and an 8-foot length of ill-fitting sliding wooden windows, which flooded the rooms with enough light and air to fill a stadium. All this, to an idealistic 22-year-old ‘traventurer’ to move into during the hot humidity of summer, had seemed just perfect – real cool!

    However, it was now the middle of January; for months the bitingly cold dampness of Tokyo's winter had gnawed relentlessly at my extremities. Spring seemed a long way off.

    The view through my wall of curtain-less single-glazed windows was now hidden by a set of external wooden screens - they helped dull the wind-rattled loose panes, but added as much warmth as a bulb in a fridge.

Keeping Warm

Winter scene in Roppongi Japan

    My central heating entailed being clad in a balaclava, mittens and a thick kimono, whilst sitting cross-legged at a blanket-covered low coffee table, under which a charcoal hibachi perched on a stone slab.
     This fiendish saucepan-sized device was my only form of heating; it burned smoke-choking charcoal that cooked my nuts at one end, whilst I breathed clouds of vapourised Sapporo whisky at the other – all an essential part of my frostbite prevention scheme.

    Every discomfort has its comfort; tonight was one of my thrice-weekly visits to the local ofuro bathhouse, where for two hours I would enjoy and endure its tortuous heat.

Typical shoe racks in Japanese home

    With nether-regions well thawed, I donned ‘long johns’ and wrapped a thick kimono around myself and shuffled downstairs in slippers to the Waseda family’s entrance hall. There, I scanned the dozens of pairs of assorted shoes, clogs, rubber boots and slippers kept in slatted racks, until among the mélange of footwear I found my pair of two-inch-high,wooden geta clogs.

Cold Crisp Snow

    I slid open the front door and a cold crisp silence reflected back at me: four inches of freshly fallen snow lay outside: making the house feel positively warm.

Pair of Japanese Geta

    My normal clog-clattering quarter-mile walk to the Roppongi public bathhouse was today muffled as the soft snow whispered a compressed crunch.

    My route took me along a labyrinth of unlit alleys, lined with wooden homes;  many doubled as laundries, noodle shops, bars and rice stores, their doorways glowed with the yellow light of lacquered lanterns or wooden lamps.

    A soft scrunch of snow from behind prompted me to step to one side to allow a home-delivery boy to cycle past. He precariously balanced a foot-high stack of red lacquered food trays in one hand, and trailed an aroma of steam noodles in his wake.

    The snow-blurred sound of Tokyo's traffic sharpened as I rounded the corner, I cautiously waited for a tram to rattle past before carefully clomping my way across Roppongi Road and into Yasuda Lane.

Brrr!

    I passed a drunken salaryman chatting happily to a telephone pole whilst relieving himself. Ahead I  saw kimono-clad families scurrying coldly to, or sauntering warmly away from, the only building with light spilling from its wide wooden doorway: the Roppongi ofuro bathhouse.

    My clogs clattered noisily on the stone entrance porch as I entered the curtained doorway marked ‘Male’ in large Japanese characters. I exchanged my clogs for a pair of communal bath slippers from the scores that lined the wall.

The Bathhouse

    The familiar Buddha-like form of Mrs Nakasoni greeted me in the wooden changing hall, she sat on her high rickety perch, overseeing both the male and female changing rooms.

    She was the cashier and collected the thirty-five yen fee, sold soap and peered owl-like through perfectly round glasses; she kept an eager eye on everyone as they undressed on their respective side of the dividing screen.

    From my vantage height of nearly six feet, I could glimpse the grass being greener on the other side.

    I left my clothes in a locker, tied the wooden key around my wrist, collected a three-legged stool and an aluminum pan from the sterilizing pool, and went through to the bathing room. As I did so, I gave Mrs Nakasoni a friendly naked smile.

Japanese public bathhouse ofuro

    A line of about twenty Japanese men were already in the white-tiled washing room, each sat before low mirrors, scooping hot water from a running channel of steaming water, each washing, lathering and scrubbing themselves clean of their day's labour; a pleasurable cleaning ritual that usually took a leisurely forty-five minutes.

    The Public Ofuro at Roppongi is used by about eighty per cent of the local community, so it was a great source of lively debate and exchange of gossip. I had been going long enough to be recognized by most people and to know that a nudge from a neighbour was a common practice to indicate they wished you to scrub their back.

Not for the Faint Hearted

    Once the cleaning ritual was achieved, it was time to enter the bathhouse proper and suffer the palpitating pleasures in the brightly lit, veritable ‘Temple to Aquarians’. 
    The steamy chamber had as its altar a cascading waterfall of scalding water that fell into a small pool, where on this particular day, the hairless head of a solitary wizen Japanese monk floated. He unblinkingly watched his small pool overflow into a larger pool where a dozen or so other heads floated, each grimacing with pleasure.

Roy being cooked in traditional farmhouse wooden Ofuro -
 just add carrots and onions, stir gently. 

                             

    I knew better than to jump straight in. I stooped my naked body beside the slightly cooler larger pool and winced with painful bliss as I scooped its hot water over myself. Once the body temperature was high enough, I inched myself in and slowly poached for twenty minutes until parboiled. Few people ever ventured into the smaller but hotter pool. 
    As soon as the bone marrow felt pink and before the brain started to curdle, I retreated to the cool of the changing hall and the lustful gaze of Mrs Nakasoni. She always gave me a small bottle of X-Energy to drink. I never did quite fathom out what she hoped it would do for me – or her – but I hadn’t the energy nor inclination to reject her kind gesture.

by Roy Romsey

 

 To read another of Roy's bath-time stories, 'Naked Encounter' in Finland 

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