Japanese Toilet Technology
Japan
By the time we left China, I had soured on international travel so much that I had privately promised myself that I wouldn’t leave the US again for a long, long time. Though I had been looking forward very much to seeing Japan a few weeks ago, by this time it seemed like a chore. I was exhausted, dirty, injured (by the squatty shower), and spotted, and I wanted to go home.
Before I get to Japan, let me first state that in the entire four weeks combined that I have spent in China, I have never once used a squatty potty there. There are many reasons for this, including the following:
Anyway, you get the idea. I mention all this because when I got to Japan, I was so dazzled by the cleanliness around me that I immediately did the previously unthinkable in a gesture of trust and international good-will: I used a squatty potty for the very first time.
Japan has an odd mixture of squatty potties and western toilets, but they all have one thing in common: they are clean. Now, perhaps it is unfair to compare the plumbing of a developing country with that of a fully developed one (and China does have its good points to make up for the toilets), but the comparisons were inevitable, given our traveling schedule and the stark contrasts between the two countries. Where Japan has western toilets, they are stunningly evolved wonders of technology that leave US toilets far, far behind.
I’ll get to this in a minute, though. We arrived in Japan, noted that it was clean, were met at the airport by our host (a former TESOL OSU student who is now teaching at Gunma Prefectory Women’s University in Takasaki), guided through a series of clean trains full of thin, fit, orderly, quiet, polite, fashion-conscious people, and treated to dinner at a nice Japanese restaurant. Not only was the food delicious, but we had ICE WATER with the meal. This was an incredible relief after being in a country with unpotable water for two weeks.
We tried to shop for clothes, briefly, since the stay in China had left us with little clean laundry. The stores were full of interesting clothing, but most only carried up to size “medium”, which is more like a US small.
We proceeded next to our hotel, where we were checked in efficiently by clerks who spoke English and bowed politely and welcomingly to each of us individually. The onsen-style baths, we were told, were closed to us at present, since it was the “men’s turn”, so we were given sort of rose tea bags to put in our own baths. Onsen-style baths, by the way, are naked public baths. In Takasaki, these were natural hot springs, and they were segregated by sex. Since our hotel was a business hotel, and supposedly most of its clientele were male, the baths were only open to women on certain hours on the weekends. This I found unbelievably sexist, and they would never get away with doing this in the States – although it is possibly something like giving men the prime tee times at golf clubs – but we were somewhat relieved not to have the option at the time. If the naked baths had been available for our use, we would have naturally had to use them, and there may have been subsequent awkwardness. We went happily up to our hotel rooms (about which our hosts had only said that they were perhaps a bit too small), and were delighted to find them sparkling clean.
Upon further investigation, we noticed that the bathtub was about three or four times as deep as a traditional US bathtub, and the toilet had an alarming number of buttons on it. I wish I could reproduce the full set of instructions here (thoughtfully posted in English on the wall), but let me summarize the features of the STANDARD Japanese toilet. It has a HEATED seat, “front” and “back” washes, which can be adjusted to different pressures, and options for flushing at different water pressures (depending, of course, on how much you need – this increases water efficiency without sacrificing flushing power when you need it). Other public toilets I saw while in Japan (and the western toilets, without exception, always had heated seats) included a sink on the top of the toilet (so you could wash your hands in the water that has to go into the toilet in order flush it, rather than having it go to waste) and an odd button on the wall.
I had heard rumors prior to visiting Japan that Japanese toilets included a “flush button” which gave you the sound of flushing without the actual flush, to camouflage other noises that you might be making in the bathroom. This button was apparently developed in the interest of saving water – apparently people were flushing the toilets repeatedly for the noise rather than for the flush, and this way you get the desired effect without wasting the water. Anyway, having heard this, I was eager to find one of these buttons, and I thought I saw my chance at the women’s university just prior to our presentation on the use of simulations for language proficiency development. I pressed the button, and nothing seemed to happen, so I pressed it again. Twice. Nothing. I exited the stall and stood at the sink, observing a rush of excited people into the bathroom (odd, since the Japanese are generally orderly in their entrances and exits) and gradually becoming aware of a high-pitched beeping noise that seemed to grow in volume. I suspected at that point that it may have had something to do with the button I had pushed, and realized that as the only foreigner standing around in the bathroom, I probably looked guilty. I exited the bathroom and resolved to bring up the matter at dinner.
We had dinner at a Japanese Italian restaurant, which sounds frightening, but it was really quite good. They make a nice, thin-crust, almost gourmet pizza, and the pasta looked good, too. Plus, with a nice tall glass of ice water at meals, how can you go wrong? The faculty at the university in the foreign studies department was taking us out on our last evening in Japan, and they were a pleasure to talk to – all fluent English speaker, all had studied abroad, and all the permanent staff had their PhDs. Furthermore, I thought they could clarify some points of interest for us – namely, the nature of the button in the bathroom.
I eased into the conversation by asking them what their most shocking moments in the US had been. One of them, who had lived in LA, recalled being surprised by the segregated neighborhoods of the large cities – not what he had expected from a “melting pot”. Another recalled an incident in an NYC bathroom where a complete stranger had reached under his stall for some toilet paper. This was particularly alarming to him because in Japan, the stall walls and doors are very tall with little space between the doors and the floor. Thus, in the US, there is less privacy – and no bidets or heated toilet seats, either. We can compare this observation with Chinese foreign exchange students, who were most shocked by the finding that in the US, toilets don’t have to smell bad. They had previously taken the smell of Chinese toilets for granted.
As we were exchanging toilet stories (during which I found out, among other things, that the flush buttons do indeed exist, although they are more common in women’s restrooms, and that some toilets have musical toilet paper dispensers – odd, when you consider the obsession with toilet privacy), I brought up the subject of the button. It appears that many public toilets have emergency buttons in them, like the one I had pushed. Why the Japanese see fit to put emergency buttons in their bathrooms, I have no idea. Elevators, yes. Toilets, generally, no. What American would ever think to put an emergency button in a public toilet?
That’s the beauty of Japan. All your basic needs are provided for, plus some that you didn’t even know you had (upon arrival at the Minneapolis airport later, I was shocked when I sat on an unheated toilet seat – it had only taken me two and a half days to get used to the heated ones). What’s more, the customer service is unparalleled. At some department stores, there is one person whose job it is to bow and welcome every single customer who walks in. Compare this useless job to the following useless Chinese job – there are people whom you can pay to hold your place in line for visa applications, as waiting in this line is always at least an overnight undertaking. It is mind-blowing that there are people out there who make a living from standing in line. Standing in line so that other people can get out of China.
All the efficiency in Japan has its dark side, too, of course. Shortly before we arrived, there was an incident where a train was one minute late in departing from the station, and the driver killed himself and eighty passengers while speeding to make up the time. One minute late. ONE MINUTE. However, you have to admire his attitude (Note: the author also realizes that the Japanese were very efficient and organized in their perpetration of war crimes in other Asian countries, but that is a subject for a different story).
From my brief visit, I have to conclude that the Japanese are a clean, efficient, organized, hospitable people, well ahead of us Americans in all four of these areas, and I’d like to go back and visit at length.
