Thursday 10 April 2008

Spending a Yen

No blog or journal on Japan would be complete without a discussion on the variety and weirdness of the toilets found in this country. In older buildings you find the more traditional asian "squat" type toilet and in new buildings they will have the western toilets and sometimes a mix of both. 


Occasionally you find one thats a flush down toilet like we have in Australia, pictured here, or most commonly you find the bog standard (pun intended!) American siphonic kind thats spins a little whirlpool as is flushes.


What is weird though is the seat. They are heated and contain a bidet function you can control via buttons on the side. There is a "spray" button and a "bidet" button, I'm not exactly sure what the difference is.


Being the inquisitive type, I'd normally push the button straight away, but I remind myself of the experience I had in Singapore at the airport a few years ago. In the Singapore Airlines lounge I used the facilities, where they had a hose next to the toilet, the concept being to spray anything down that the flush missed. I picked up the hose to have a look at it and pushed the leaver.


Although it was aimed at the bowl, I had it around the wrong way. It promptly shot a large jet of high pressure water over my shoulder (missing my face by just inches), over the cubicle door across the room and into the cubicle across from me. Luckily no one was in it at the time !


The other strange thing is that the seat has a sensor in it, when you sit down it ejects a small amount of water into the bowl. I can't work out why, its not enough to actually flush the toilet. Its quite annoying as Emma is scared of it. In Tokyo I could turn off the water supply to it before she used it, but I can't here in Kyoto.


All the toilets are made by a company called Toto. As Dorothy would have said "I don't think we are in Kansas anymore Toto"



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