Japan vs New York: Toilets
Doris Night here blogging from Tokyo, bringing you the high - or hai I should say - and lowlights of the Japan vs New York smackdown of 2006.
New York city public toilets, we all know and fear them. Many of us have been caught in some undesirable place having to go and deciding to hold it. A prime example is Times Square, where once in a McDonald`s I saw an impatient homeless woman drop trou and pee in the sink. Or we`ve figured out the good places to go, like the restroom in Kiehl`s on 3rd Avenue or in any swank hotel. But cleanliness aside, when we walk into a public restroom in NYC, we know what to expect. Toilet, seat covers (ideally), toilet paper (hopefull).
Japanese toilets are a breed all their own. Some of you might know that there`s the squat version and then the Western version. I was mentally prepared for this and even studied the proper way to use a squat toilet.
I`ve used two so far, one which was fine and the other which is definitley in the running for Most Disgusting Squat Toilet in Tokyo. (My advice? Don`t wear pants with overlong cuffs when you might have to use a squat bowl.) But nothing could have prepared me for the fancy-schmanciness of the high tech Western-style Japanese toilet.
First off, not only are some of the seats padded, dude they`re WARM, which is awesome when you`ve just come in from trooping around all day in the Tokyo cold. Not only that, you can press certain buttons and a jet of water will come shooting up to clean your, um, nether regions, and then a blast of warm air to dry you off.
Then to top it all off, for the pee shy, some toilets generate a babbling brook type sound when you sit, which totally scared the shit out of me (not literally) the first time I encountered one. And the hand dryers? Unlike American ones they actually dry your hands. That`s cuz they generate winds gusting up to 100 mph and threw this blogger back against the wall. I`m looking forward to encoutering a talking toilet next.
So what`s the verdict? I`d have to say Japanese toilets win over New York ones, pants down.
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What a truly great pooping experience it seems you’ve had.
If you go to a public bath, or one of the fancier hotels you might run across a toilet seat that measures your body fat percentage. It sends a small electric current through you as you sit, and gives a digital printout a few seconds later.
have you seen the ones that have the hand washing basin built into the top of the toilet tank? I thought that was pretty ingenious, cutting down on waste water since it uses the water you just washed your hands in for the next flush.
cully, no i haven`t seen the one with the built in hand washing basin. sounds very efficient.
my friend and i hope to go to a public bath house today (monday) so maybe we`ll see one of those body fat measuring ones there.
Karlik4