You’ve come a long way baby…

Pppppffffshhhhtt… the sound that greets you as you enter the toilet. “Hmm, maybe I set off the automatic toilet flush” I think to myself. I lift the toilet seat, no water. Ah, it’s another one of these Japanese gadgets. After a few moments reflection as I sit on the warmed toilet seat, I realise it is probably for shy Japanese ladies embarrassed at the thought that women in neighbouring cubicles may hear them do their business. So with this flushing noise I can trump away as I please. Later discussion reveals ladies flushing the toilet before going to the toilet were becoming such a problem that the reservoir supplying water to Kyoto, Biwa Lake, had dramatically reduced water levels. The government got the owners of public buildings, shopping centres etc together to find a solution – and this is what they came up with.

The gadgets, widgets and thingummies don’t end there. Aside from the seat being heated, the toilet seat has on average four buttons alongside it. They provide a bidet type water jet to clean your posterior, variable water pressure and temperature, music/flushing sound and one appears to have had a hair curling device. Well, there was a picture of a woman with curly hair, I don’t read Japanese and when I pressed it I couldn’t tell what it did, so I am guessing that’s what it was for.

The week before coming to Japan I was attending a workshop and staying in a hotel by the beach in Côte d’Ivoire. Twice, two times, not just once, but a second time too, I went to sit on the toilet seat and got up again straight away thinking that I had sat down on the lid of the toilet, the feeling of a proper toilet seat had become so unfamiliar. Then in Japan, all this gadgetry in public toilets even showed me that I had come a long way from my toilet-seat less commode in Man, 18 Montagnes (see post from 15 June "Gender Mainstreaming").