Smart toilets are a real cultural phenomenon in Japan. Anyone who has travelled in Japan will confirm that it is simply impossible not to admire Japanese toilets… It’s a topic that is impossible to avoid. Toilets are part of the culture. There are many legends about Japanese toilets.
Firstly, it is obvious that for the Japanese the toilet is an existential thing. They can be found everywhere and you will always have a toilet somewhere under your right arm when you have the slightest errand to run. So, for the Japanese, one of the biggest culture shocks when they arrive in Europe is the reality that the toilet is far from being a constitutionally guaranteed right. I remember when in my country, Lithuania, the Japanese were afraid to stick their noses anywhere beyond the radar of the toilet.
Toilets in Japan, meanwhile, are of two kinds. There are the toilets called yoshiki 洋式, which are western-style where you can sit down like a gentleman, and washiki 和式, which are Japanese-style toilets. In other words a hole and a drain. I only remember those in my school days. When I first came to Japan, when I had to live in a university dormitory, I remember during the so-called dormitory tour, a local Japanese man on an introduction tour for all us foreigners would say, ‘This is the big bath.” Well, the one like in the yakuza movies where ten guys bathe in one bath. Interesting. Then I remember going up to the second floor of the dormitory. This is where he showed us toilet.
There are three cubicles in the toilet room. The Japanese man opens the first door, and there glows a traditional Japanese type of toilet, i.e. a toilet with a hole. As I watch, the eyes of His Majesty the British Crown, standing to my right, bulge out of his forehead like a concola. Naturally, the phrase ‘Waht a fuck?’ is uttered. This well-known phrase is followed by the firm statement “I’m not going to pee here. No chance”. And sure enough, our aristocratic Englishman, during his ten months, i.e. the entire school year, always used only the second or third cubicle.
I think the Japanese themselves take the toilet very seriously. The amount of attention that is paid to them, in the form of instructions, in the form of equipment, in the form of a large number of them, does not allow one to doubt that this is a serious matter. There are a lot of witty jokes on the Internet about how to use the toilet properly. The whole lot of instructions boils down to one thing: how to make it possible for the customer to have poo in peace.
As for the essential features of the Japanese toilet, what is particularly admirable are the heated seats on which you sit very comfortably and even longer than you would wear them. The heated seats are a godsend in the cold winter months, especially as there is no central heating and the rooms are slighlty cold.
Then all the front and rear washes as they should be. Adjusting the current and in some cases the temperature. The water is warm.
I have had the opportunity to try out the rinsing procedures myself. When I was a student the university organised a one-day visit to the ‘real’ Japanese. Maybe three or four foreigners went. The Japanese families were extraordinary. A huge house, even a garden. If there is a garden in Tokyo next to the house you know the family is really extraordinary. They offered us refreshments. After about half an hour I sneak off to the toilet unsuspecting anything sneaky. And then I face reality. I stand like a sphinx and look at the toilet as if it were the eighth wonder of the world. Everything is fine but the crucial question is how to flush. The toilet handles have only some hieroglyphics that I cannot see and many buttons. I am standing here wondering what to press now. I can’t think of anything good so I’m going to go with the Russian roulette principle and try to press the most innocent looking button. Brrr. There is a sound. I realise that the plan is going in the wrong direction. I put my head closer to the toilet. I look up and see a pipe coming out. Ah,,, and why is it here, an existential question starts to plague me. And then, like a fountain, a trickle of warm water comes down and splashes all over my trousers. Panic. I start pressing buttons in a row just to get the naughty tube packed faster. Somehow the tube collapses back into the way. As if the story should end there but it was really embarrassing to slip out of the toilet with my trousers soaked in water. I wonder what the hospitable hosts thought at the time.
The privacy in the toilets is a bit ridiculous. In very many, as soon as you walk in, a motion sensor triggers the sound of running water, some sort of rustling, a bird chirping, or, as soon as you sit down, the water starts running, or there is a privacy button on the control panel that triggers all sorts of such sounds. It is really a very nice feature for a special kind of peace.
There are never too many slippers in a Japanese home. It’s quite common for all homes to have special slippers placed at the entrance to the toilet just for the toilet. Even in sports centres there are these ridiculous giant slippers that you can slip into comfortably without slipping off your basketball shoes. These slippers can be patented under Sabonis’s name, and they are extremely huge.
Another very practical thing is the tap for the water funnel in the tank. In other words, when you flush the toilet, the first thing you do is to run clean water through a special tap on top of the toilet cistern. And only then does the water drain into the tank, from where the contents are flushed. Two birds with one stone. This design not only allows the contents to be flushed, but also allows hands to be conveniently washed. That is why the Japanese are accustomed to carrying small towels with them wherever they go to dry their hands.
So it is very difficult to return to the world of our traditional toilets once you are familiar with Japanese toilet culture. After coming back home from Japan you would definitely look for an opportunity to install a Japanese smart toilet in your home.
