No time for Rest in this Restroom

Unpacked my suitcases. Still waiting on the majority of my household items to arrives from the US, but I brought 4 huge suitcases on the plane to get me started. As I’m putting it all away, I’m bombarded by “things”. Little things I don’t understand. First and foremost being the toilet! I mean it has a CONTROL PANEL! I’m used to toilets having one button-the handle. This has so many buttons and lights, the bowl is plugged into an electric outlet. On the bright side though, I have to push ZERO of these buttons in order to use and flush the toilet. So in reality, this super high tech toilet is actually “less” work than the old American toilet I’m used to. It has some fancy sensor that knows how much to flush and when you get up, presto-it does it for you!

Although I can’t actual read any of the buttons, I figure that the pictures tell the tale. Basically a variety of sprays and spritzs for the parts that do the toilet business. And of course what do you do after you get something all wet….well you blow-dry it of course. My first thought is, this all seems rather time consuming.  First actually doing what you went to the bathroom to do, then following it up with a car wash style cleaning regime? As Sweet Brown once said “Ain't nobody got time for that!” (If you don’t know it, Google it.) I mean, maybe in the privacy of your own home, you feel like treating yourself to the deluxe toilet experience when time allows, I don’t know. What surprises me the most is that public toilets are the same.  I mean women’s bathroom lines are bad enough, you add an extra wash & dry cycle to the mix, you’re exponentially increasing the wait time. So maybe you’re asking yourself the same thing I asked myself….. do people really use all those features all the time? Maybe, I don’t know yet, I don’t know anyone well enough to really investigate their bathroom habits.  The simple fact that most toilets are like this leads me to believe that they have all these features because they ARE used, they ARE the standard. 

That brings me to a problem with my fancy toilet, the heated seat. I’ll be honest the last thing I want in a Tokyo summer where its 95 degrees and 100% humidity, it to sit my ass on a toasty warm seat. NO. Just no. Maybe in the middle of a cold winter night as I stumble half asleep to the bathroom….maybe then I’ll enjoy the warmth of a heated seat. Time will tell, but right now, in the summer--definitely not the time.  (The temperature is adjustable, so it is set as low as it goes, but I’m not sure if it can be turned off.)  Heated seats are also used on some public toilets, which again, seems strange to me. First off, I don’t like even sitting on public toilets, but when you do and it’s pretty darn warm, all I can think is that someone before me was sitting there way too long (And maybe someone was because they did the whole wash & dry cycle). What my mind does not think is “Oh, this is a lovely electronically warmed seat for my comfort”, but maybe that’s just me.

I went to a public bathroom just the other day where there was a feature I had not yet experienced. It was a little built in speaker that played the sound of running water. There was a button that turned the sound on and off. I guess either people have shy bladders and need to hear the sound of running water for encouragement, or they are really bothered by the sound of someone peeing? (which, I hate to break it to you, also sounds like running water). Either way, this bathroom was like a orchestra of weird sounds, three stalls playing electronic babbling brooks, actual running water from the sinks, hand dryers blowing, butt dryers blowing, toilets flushing, and amazingly enough you could still hear people peeing.

Toilet Control Panel