Tag Archives: bathroom

Japanese Ghost Story

Nationality: Japanese American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Torrance, CA
Performance Date: March 12, 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Japanese

So a group of Japanese boys decided to play hide and seek in their school at night.  One of the boys was trying to find a place to hide when he saw a woman with long dark hair in a white dress.  He got really scared so he ran into the bathroom and hid in the fifth stall.  All of a sudden, he heard the bathroom door open and looked under the stall door.  He saw the feet of the ghost woman.  The woman then opened the door to the first stall. Nobody there.  Closes it.  She opens the second stall. Nobody there. Closes it.  She opens the third stall. Nobody there. Closes it.  She opens the fourth stall. Nobody there. Closes it.  The boy was so scared and waited for the door of his stall to open.  When it did not happen, he decided to stay in the stall until somebody came to look for him.  Eventually, he fell asleep and when he woke up, realized that school had started.  He got off of the toilet and tried to open the stall door.  But the door would not budge.  Then he looked up.  The woman had been hanging over the door and staring at him the entire time.

My informant told me this story during a sleepover.  It had been pretty late at night and really dark.  I asked her where she had heard it from, and she replied that her mom had told her this story when she was young.  My informant told me that she interpreted this story has a lesson to not hang out late at night.

After hearing this story, I noticed that this story has a connection to Hanako of the Toilet.  Hanako of the Toilet, is a very popular Japanese urban legend about the ghost of a little girl named Hanako who haunts school bathrooms. With the story of Hanako and my informant’s ghost story, I believe that they are both conveying how the bathroom is a very vulnerable place to be in alone.  The restroom can be considered to be a vulnerable place because people usually go alone and are half-naked when there, making it a perfect place for something to take advantage and attack people.  Both of these stories enhance the fear of dangers that can occur while using the toilet.

Custom – USA

Nationality: American
Age: 24
Occupation: Student
Residence: Scarsdale, NY
Performance Date: April 2, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Custom—USA

“The public bathroom hand washing technique…”

Alexander learned this custom from his grandfather when he was in the 7th grade.  His grandfather, a passionate and devoted doctor, often found and acquired ways of bringing some of his medical skills and habits into the world outside of medicine.  The perfect example of this comes in the form of the “public bathroom hand washing technique” as Alexander calls it.  The theory behind the custom is that bathrooms are filthy beds of bacteria.  Alexander’s grandfather believed that a sure way of getting sick or picking up germs was touching something in a public restroom.  As a result, he taught Alexander this technique as a means of avoiding skin contact with anything in a public restroom.  If you’re lucky, the bathroom operates on automatic sensor devices, in which case you don’t need to touch anything to begin with.  In the event that you do need to touch something, you begin by locating the paper towels.  If there is a fresh stack on the counter, you can pick up the top towel and use that to turn on the faucet as well as dispense soap into your hand.  In the event that there is a knob or roller that you must touch to dispense paper towels, you have to move to plan B.  If you are wearing a long sleeve shirt, you can pull you sleeve down and cover your hand with that.  If not, you can use your elbow to crank the lever (if your elbow gets bacteria on it it’s ok—your elbow doesn’t come in contact with your eyes, ears, nose, mouth very much, just be sure to wash your elbow when you get home).  After using paper towels to get soap and turn on and off the faucet, you need to perform the same operation with the door handle.  To avoid contact with it, use a paper towel to pull it open, and hold it in that position with your foot.  Throw the paper towel into the garbage and walk out.  If the garbage bin is far away, do your best to throw it in but do not sacrifice putting in the garbage by touching something.  Throw it on the floor if you have to.  If you really know what your doing, as my grandfather does, carry around paper towels or tissue at all times so you don’t have to go about the whole paper towel routine, you can just use your own in not touching anything and going about your business.

This technique was taught to Alexander’s grandfather by one of his colleagues.  While it’s a useful way of avoiding bacteria and other germs, it’s almost comical to think about someone using the technique.  His grandfather has made it a custom of his because he finds it extremely significant in maintaining good health.  The extent to which avoiding bathroom germs in a such a manner really keeps us healthy we may not know, but doctors certainly have folkloric customs such as these that they swear by.