This was the best toilet experience of my life. I went for an innocent loo break between sushi courses and ended up road-testing the lavatorial equivalent of Nasa's Space Shuttle. In place of the toilet roll, there was a control panel.
Instead of a sign requesting that ladies please use the bin provided, there was a set of laminated instructions.
'Welcome to the new experience of Aspen,' began the notice. 'Paperless Toilet Technology from Japan.' You would expect this sort of glitzy hightechery in Tokyo, but in grubby old London?
The first step was easy: sit down and use the loo as normal. The technology kicks in only when you are perched on the seat; which, incidentally, is gently heated to the temperature of a half-bled radiator.
And then I had a choice: press 'bidet' or 'wash'. Not knowing which was which, I threw caution to the wind and experimented.
The former was a more gentle affair, as a mellow jet of warm water shot up towards my rear. The latter involved an extended, shower-like spray head and was rather more. . . bracing.
Suitably cleansed, I was then to activate the dryer, which was pretty damn industrial - like having your backside blown about by a vicious yet strangely pleasant gust of warm air. It was brilliant - so futuristic!
The truth is that Britain has long had a rather shabby reputation in this department.
Whereas 90 per cent of Argentinians apparently own - and, crucially, use - a bidet, and Italians are so openly dedicated to washing their bums that if you spend a day at their house, you will be handed a special 'bidet towel' on the way in so that you do not use a bath towel by mistake, here on our repressed little islands we are very old-school in our toilet habits.