
Sure, when you gotta go, you gotta go, but that doesn’t mean you gotta come.
In Japan, there’s a bit of a manners debate about using convenience store restrooms. Some people think it’s proper to ask permission from the staff first, and many stores have signs asking customers to do so. On the other hand, the bathrooms don’t require a key to access, permission is pretty much always granted, and some customers feel embarrassed announcing to a stranger that they need to go to the bathroom.
28-year-old Atsushi Iwao appears to be in the you-should-ask-first camp, which ordinarily would be a sign of courteousness on his part. However, the specific question he posed to a female convenience store clerk in Fukuoka City was far from an example of elegant etiquette, as he asked:
“I want to masturbate, so would it be all right if I used the restroom?”
In a further example of Iwao’s odd mix of thoughtfulness and classlessness, he asked the question while purchasing a pack of condoms, suggesting that he was planning to keep the mess to a minimum, but it’d likely be giving him too much credit to assume he was also planning to take the used prophylactic with him when he was done.
The request was, of course, denied, as was an identical one Iwao made on a separate date within the same month. Both incidents took place in October of 2021, but this week police officers were able to identify Iwao and placed him under arrest for obscene conduct, likely long after he’d assumed he’d gotten away with it for good. Iwao, a middle school social studies teacher, was also suspected of obscene conduct of an unannounced nature in a Fukuoka drugstore in December of 2021, and has admitted to all three incidents, saying “There is no mistake” in regards to the accusations. Odds are his arrest won’t do anything to sway the convenience store owners elsewhere in Japan who are being asked to let their store restrooms be used as public toilets for non-customers as well.
Source: Tele Q via Otakomu, Kyushu Asahi Hoso
Top image: Pakutaso (edited by SoraNews24)
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