The Slightly Embarrassing, but Nonetheless Important Subject of...

OK, so you go to the toilet in Japan.

It looks fairly ordinary...

...at first.


But, what's this?　

"In Operation" ?

"Seat On" ?

"Warm Water" ?

　 Well, you sit down on the warmed seat (which prevents bad things happening), and when you are, ahem, done:
　

　Look, just look at the pictures and use your imagination.

The left up- and down-arrows are water (spray) strength, and the right says "nozzle" with "forward" and "back" on the arrows.

If you still don't understand, please raise your hand and call out "I need an adult".

Flushing gives you the option of "big" or "small":

　 And when you flush, water comes out of the thing at the top:

　 Now, I never knew what that was for until I asked someone, and the answer is that it is for washing your hands.

Even though toilets have seperate hand basins.

This is a way to save water, because this water comes from the tank.

Apparrently, its quite clean.


I have to admit I have yet to get used to this.

Now, you must be thinking "well, if there isn't enough space, you can't fit the basin in".

But check this out:



　 A sink large enough for a large grapefruit. Most likely the smallest in the world.

Its so small, the tap is actually...

...inside the pipe !
　


　
Also, if you look at the first picture of the sink, you can see that the pipe does a loop instead of a U-tube, probably in order to save space.

Now, do take note (and I'm pleased that you're taking notes), that in some cases you can get press-button flush:



In other cases, you can get a tv in the toilet...

... with its own remote control ("rimokon"):　

　 In Haneda airport (Tokyo), you even get tv's in the toilet cubicles:
　

　
So, with all this technology, you would be surprised to hear that western-style toilet sales only exceeded those of squat-style toilets in 1977.
　

　 And that the current electronic toilet was first introduced by Toto in 1980.

Now, if you think that that is the extent of toilet tech in Japan, then take a look at this:



　 With this control panel, you can set the ventilation time for the toilet and shower room, including a drying setting.

This is a standard-size bath:
　

Compact, even for a medium-sized Japanese person.　

But, of course, it does have some fantastic technology:



　 You can tell it to fill the bath with how much water (to the nearest liter), how warm (to the nearest degree), when (you can put in on timer), and it can even call out to you to tell you when its done.

Wow.