Do you have to poop when you're in a bookstore?

Here's perhaps an interesting post for you - and also a pretty personal one:

I've always adored being around books.  My father was a bit of a book collector, and I enjoyed pulling random encyclopedia volumes off the shelf and having a flick through, or looking through the multitude of wildlife books he had and copying the watercolour paintings of different types of birds in crude crayon.

I've carried on with my own trait of collecting books - first Japanese grammar books when I was learning Japanese through high school and my undergraduate degree, and those books slowly blended into anything I could get my hands on about language and linguistics.  Now it's archaeology, lots and lots of books on archaeology, palaeolithic archaeology, the origin of language, and old 19th century anthropologist books with strange pictures and stranger views on humanity.

And I've married a man who could bury me in his own book collection.  So I'm often surrounded by books at home.  And they don't make me need to poop.

In order to acquire these books, I purchase many of them online - but, of course, I also spend a lot of time in bookshops.  And a strange thing happens when I'm in a bookshop, or a library.  Without fail, I'll feel like I need to go to the bathroom.  I don't know when I first noticed this - probably in my early 20s when I was frequenting bookshops more - but every time I stepped into an Oxfam bookshop, the university library, or a Chapters or Waterstone's, I've needed to cut my browsing short or else I'll need to start searching for a bathroom.

And once I've left the premises... the feeling goes away!

I thought this was extremely unusual, and never mentioned it to anyone, until one day during a conversation with two friends about books and bookstores.

And do you know what one of my friends said?

With a shocked look on her face, she said the exact same thing happens to her!!  We were united in this strange strange phenomenon.

Years later, fast forward to yesterday, and I get a text from her that simply says "You know that strange thing we both have?  It's a real thing!  Look up Mariko Aoki phenomenon!"

Simply put, the Mariko Aoki phenomenon (Japanese 青木まり子現象) is the urge to defacate when you visit a bookstore.  It's a thing! It's named after Mariko Aoki, a Japanese woman who wrote about these feelings she had in a magazine in the 80s.  After that she recieved letters from lots of other people who had the same thing!

Here is the Wikipedia article.

A quick trip around the interwebs shows others speaking about this strange urge.  Many other articles are just posting about it because it's funny.

Wikipedia notes some theories say it is because of the smell of the ink, or the posture you are in while you look at books.  I don't think it's either of these - I'm around books all the time at home!  I suggested to my husband that it might be because I love books and it makes me excited and a bit tense - all these unread, unbought books!!  He suggests it's the smell of paper.  Hm, perhaps it could be the smell.

But I'm seriously considering starting a Facebook page so us sufferers can rally together in solidarity!  What do we want?  To poop!  When do we want it?  When we're in a bookstore!

Are there any other sufferers out there?