But I hear the toilets are great! I have saved the following article for months now. Enjoy. (warning: its a little long, and doesn't have much investment value, unless you know some good plumbing fixture companies. also the apostrophes get a little screwed up, but so it goes.)
But Do They Flush?
By Mary Jordan and
Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post
Foreign Service
Thursday, May 15,
1997; Page A01
TOKYO¥An American
diplomat was at a
dinner party in a Japanese home when he excused
himself to go to the bathroom. He did his
business, stood up and realized he didnOt have
a clue about how to flush the toilet.
The diplomat speaks Japanese, but he was still
baffled by the colorful array of buttons on the
complicated keypad on the toilet. So he just
started pushing.
He hit the noisemaker button that makes a
flushing sound to mask any noise you might be
making in the john. He hit the button that
starts the blow-dryer for your bottom. Then he
hit the bidet button and watched helplessly as
a little plastic arm, sort of a squirt gun
shaped like a toothbrush, appeared from the
back of the bowl and began shooting a stream of
warm water across the room and onto the mirror.
And thatOs how one of AmericaOs promising young
Foreign Service officers ended up frantically
wiping down a Japanese bathroom with a wad of
toilet paper.
"It was one of my most embarrassing experiences
in Japan," said the embassy employee who,
diplomatically, asked not to be identified.
Forget that you need to know three alphabets to
read a Japanese newspaper. Forget that the new
fashion craze in Tokyo this spring is women
gluing their bras in place. Forget horse sushi.
The most puzzling thing for many foreigners
here is Japanese toilets.
Just as many foreigners had finally mastered
the traditional Japanese "squatter" with no
seat, they are being confused anew by the
latest generation of Japanese
toilets¥super-high-tech sit-down models with a
control panel that looks like the cockpit of a
plane.
Japan is the world leader in high-tech toilets,
and its biggest toilet company, Toto, is
working on a home model that will chemically
analyze urine. Already selling well are toilets
that clean themselves, have coatings that
resist germs and spray pulsating water to
massage your backside.
The toilets basically look like a standard
American model, except for the control pad,
which sometimes comes with a digital clock to
tell you how long you have been in the
bathroom. Some of the buttons control the
temperature of the water squirted onto your
backside. The bottom-washer function, combined
with the bottom blow-dryer, is designed to do
away with the need for toilet tissue. Other
buttons automatically open and close the lid;
the button for men lifts lid and seat; the
button for women lifts the lid only. Some
toilets even have a hand-held remote control: a
clicker for the loo.
Many foreigners say once you get used to these
toilets¥which cost $2,000 to $4,000¥itOs hard
to do without them, especially the automatic
seat warmer.
Harry Sweeney, an Irishman who raises horses on
JapanOs cold north island of Hokkaido, said he
knows a man who drives a mile and a half out of
his way each morning to use a public toilet
with a heated seat. "It gets very cold up here
in the winter, so those heated seats arenOt a
luxury, theyOre a necessity," Sweeney said.
But some people never get the hang of it¥they
find themselves panicked, trapped in stalls,
unable to figure out how to flush. Worse, they
find themselves stranded on the toilet, unsure
how to shut off the spraying bidet and unable
to get up without soaking themselves and the
bathroom.
Hubert Igabille, a salesclerk at a Timberland
clothes store in nearby Aoyama, said he thinks
the computerized toilet in his shop needs a
bilingual panel. Some customers take one look
at the Japanese characters on the control panel
and decide to skip it, he said.
Igabille sees the bathroom gadgetry as a
logical extension of high-tech Japan, where
airport vacuums whiz around without any human
help, many cars are equipped with digital
displays that use satellite technology to plot
the driverOs exact location on a map, and
researchers are planning to use cockroaches
fitted with miniature cameras to inspect sewer
pipes.
Although Japan is the worldOs second-richest
nation, 30 percent of Japanese people live in
homes that are not hooked up to sewer lines or
septic tanks and have no flush toilets,
according to the Construction Ministry. But in
recent years in places where there is a flush
system, super-luxurious high-tech toilets have
become extremely popular.
Toto sells about $400 million worth of
high-tech Washlet toilets a year, and they
estimate they have only half the market here.
They have expanded that market with the Travel
Washlet, a portable hand-held bottom washer.
Going on a trip where they might not have
top-of-the-line toilets? No problem: Just fill
your "Travel Washlet" with warm water at home.
Then after nature calls on the road, unfold the
little squirt-nozzle and wash your behind just
like at home. At $100 each, Toto has sold
180,000 of these gizmos in the last two years.
Toto now wants a piece of the U.S. market. So
it is starting with a less expensive, less
complicated model.
The U.S. Toto is a $600 seat, lid and control
panel that attaches to a regular American
toilet bowl.
It features a heated seat, the bottom washer
and a deodorizing fan that "breaks down odorous
molecules and returns clean air into the
bathroom environment," according to Toto
literature.
Toto has gone to great lengths to make its
toilets, bathtubs and other products
user-friendly. Thousands of people have
collected data on the best features of a
toilet, and at the companyOs "human engineering
laboratory," volunteers sit in a Toto bathtub
with electrodes strapped to their skull, to
measure brain waves and "the effects of bathing
on the human body."
Toto spokesman Yojiro Watanabe said the toilets
are also popular because they make the bathroom
a place where people want to spend relaxed
time. Japanese homes are generally so small
that the bathroom is often the only place where
someone can be alone, he said.
"Particularly middle-aged salarymen have no
personal space in their lives," Watanabe said.
"So especially for them, bathrooms can be the
only place where privacy is guaranteed."
Tom Quinn, a Californian who does play-by-play
analysis of sumo matches on Japanese
television, said he has a high-tech toilet at
home but wishes he had a plain old American
one. "I donOt like anything startling in the
bathroom," he said. "I donOt want rocket
controls on my toilet."
Researcher Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this
report.
c Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company |
