Well, okay, there are an awful lot of squalid and smelly 'squat' toilets, which inspire considerably less joy. But Japan is also the home of the Washlet, an all-singing, all-dancing toilet with heated seat...
A standard model
Anyway, I'm blathering. Basically, toilets in Japan come in three kinds: squat toilets, normal toilets, and high-tech electronic toilets with control panels. The most basic of these latter come with some kind of bidet. The sophisticated ones have more buttons than the Apollo 11.
A fairly typical design might have four main buttons - 'stop', 'bum', 'bidet' and 'fake flushing sound', to mask the sound of your shame. There will also be buttons to increase the water pressure from 'weak' (='bracing') to 'strong' (='enema').
Useful toilet kanji:
止 = stop (you should identify this BEFORE pressing any other button)
弱 = weak
強 = strong
This is my own toilet!! In my own apartment! Isn't it exciting!!
Other key buttons should be illustrated with handy pictures. ^_^
Other toilet functions I've encountered include being able to select the position of the bidet nozzles, massage seats and other buttons I've never dared press. Fully utilising some of these toilets could become a kind of ongoing hobby.
One other funky function of many toilets is their 'no touch', 'eco' system where a sensor detects that you've gotten up, and flushes the toilet automatically. What this invariably means is the toilet will flush about three seconds before you're ready, forcing you to wait and then flush it again. It may even flush multiple times before you're ready. And it really gets going if you're just going into the cubicle to change your clothes. I don't quite understand how that makes the toilet 'eco'.
The alternative is that the sensor doesn't detect anything at all. The absence of a touch button robs you of any power to do anything but walk back and forth between door and toilet, sitting down and standing up again, hoping something you do will trigger it.
Isn't it a touch over-engineered? An ordinary flush lavatory might not be glamorous, but it gets the job done with little fuss, and there's not much that can go wrong with it. Can yours be manually flushed if the electronics fail?
ReplyDeleteYes, I totally agree. And having toilets sitting there with lights blinking and seat warmed, unnecessarily consuming energy, seems a bit over-indulgent and wasteful to me. They are comfortable though. ^_^
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