Thursday 22 November 2012

A toilet first

From the washlets  that have adjustable sprays and blow driers to the very public public toilets  that have people performing in public view, toilets in Japan are most definitely their own genre.

I was in Okachimachi today and came across a rather unusual combination - a single toilet cubicle with both an old style squat toilet AND a modern style washlet with multiple buttons with various functions...  Take your pick... The sign on the wall requested no smoking (fair enough), and no mobile phone use. I am baffled with the latter..



5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Olá Cecilia, como vai?

No banheiro contém aquele outro acessório com a finalidade dos homens usar?

Cecilia said...

Hello Anon,

It was the women's loo... I didn't check out the men's... now that you mention it... I should have. There was no urinal in here, I assume there would have been in the men's.

Rurousha said...

I think that "no phone" message is aimed at people like you who can't multi-task. Heh heh. Coz why if you had to navigate your way around that squat toilet while talking (typing?!) on a phone, you'd definitely end up with one foot in it.

(^0^)

Rurousha said...

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time.

The two toilets are so close together that you'd have to squat extremely, umm, compactly if you wanted to use the squat toilet.

PS: Maybe the Western one is there to serve as a support/handle/assistance for obaasan who use the squat one and then can't get up again?

Cecilia said...

It's odd isn't it. I showed Hiro's mother & she'd never seen anything like it either.

I've been thinking about the sign. I wonder if it's because people take longer if they are also catching up on their emailing.

It's in Ameyoko, directly under the train tracks.

Possible explanations - someone misordered and they had two. Someone miscalculated space and there was no room for two. Someone had shares in the loo company / was getting kickbacks on units sold. A compromise solution for an argument between modernists and traditionalists... I should have asked :)