Japan To End Tourists' Toilet Trouble With Standardised Buttons (theguardian.com) 187
The Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association, a consortium of companies producing plumbing products has agreed to unify the iconography used on the often baffling control panels for Japanese toilets. From a report on The Guardian: Navigating the array of buttons on Japan's high-tech toilets can be a disconcerting experience for the uninitiated, who, expecting to hear a familiar flushing sound, are instead subjected to a sudden, and unwanted, cleansing of the nether regions. As Japan prepares for an influx of overseas visitors during the 2019 rugby World Cup and the Tokyo Olympics the following year, the country's sanitation industry has agreed to standardize pictograms on toilets so users know for certain if they are about to receive a blast of warm air or a jet of water. Nine manufacturers belonging to the Japan sanitary equipment industry association will soon start using the same eight symbols to explain the buttons found on their state-of-the-art WCs. At a launch event this week, the firms said they had agreed to simplify the pictography in response to complaints from tourists that they are confused by symbols that differ depending on the make of toilet. In a survey of 600 foreign visitors, a quarter said they could not understand some of the symbols that appear on the toilet buttons.
That Quarter (Score:2)
> a quarter said they could not understand some of the symbols that appear on the toilet buttons.
Those are the quarter of the population that need to be sent on the B-ARK.
Share and Enjoy! (Score:5, Funny)
And if you get it wrong, it pisses right back at you [wikimedia.org]!
Re:Share and Enjoy! (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, it is a "moon" lander.
Re:Share and Enjoy! (Score:5, Funny)
Don't accidently hit the "tampon remove" button.
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I don't think I have ever seen a bidet at least not in person, I could easily imagine some mid-westerner getting an unexpected jet of water on a public toilet and having a heart attack.
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I don't think I have ever seen a bidet at least not in person, I could easily imagine some mid-westerner getting an unexpected jet of water on a public toilet and having a heart attack.
If you are in a country where a bidet is common, you would find it sitting next to the toilet, so you wouldn't get an ass-squirt induced heart attack without actually getting up and moving over to the bidet, sitting down and turning it on.
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Except as this whole article is about bidets built into the toilets in Japan, where you can be unexpectedly sprayed by a jet of water because of a misunderstanding of the iconography on the toilets.
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Except as this whole article is about bidets built into the toilets in Japan, where you can be unexpectedly sprayed by a jet of water because of a misunderstanding of the iconography on the toilets.
I understand that this is the basic plot of most anime cartoons.
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Well played :-)
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Do they have a "finish you off" button?
Re:Share and Enjoy! (Score:5, Funny)
"He doesn't know how to use the three seashells!"
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And if you get it wrong, it pisses right back at you!
Yes, I first visited Japan around 1990, and I remember the first time I encountered one of those toilets. (Well, the functions weren't quite as advanced as what you linked, but still several odd buttons.)
Curious, I pressed a couple of buttons (expecting maybe a different flush or something -- one of the buttons played music or something, if I recall), and that exact scene happened to me. Some bizarre protuberance jutted forth from the back of the toilet and sprayed water all over the room. Thank goodne
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Consider the alternate. Which other parts of you body are you content to smear your faeces over and then consider clean with simply wipe with a piece of paper. Hell, you wash your hands and law mandates you wash you hands if you work in a kitchen and that was with a piece of paper between your hands and you faeces, yet you are content with your non-self cleaning butthole and surrounding contaminated regions. Get used to it, the change is very likely to spread no matter how much the dead tree ass wipe compan
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Awesome, how do I get one for my house?
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Why does it have a boob-powered flux capacitor?
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>Jesus Christ, that thing's [wikimedia.org] more complicated than the Moon Lander!
Using my rather hopeless knowledge of Japanese:
The biggest two buttons on the top
oo-Large, Shou-Small.
The rightmost 3 buttons are icons, not Japanese.
The big buttons along the front...
Shi - Stop, ahshira - Buttocks, yawaraka - soft, heta - (kanji transliteration of heater), Kansou? - Dryer
Everything below the panel - To set up the temperate and water pressure.
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After much googling and looking up my Kanji dictionary, the top two buttons are for large flush and small flush.
heta ain't heta. It's beda the transliteration of bidet - the pixelly image didn't make the diacritics clear. Presumably for squirting water where your girly bits might be if you are a girl. I understand that many males on Slashdot have not met females, so this might be hard to grasp.
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Would you imagine the pain trying to talk to one of these things (if they had an AI), or using one through a touch interface ?
Mr Toilet banishes waste with the power of wind and ghosts!
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Jesus Christ, that thing's [wikimedia.org] more complicated than the Moon Lander!
And if you get it wrong, it pisses right back at you [wikimedia.org]!
Just be grateful these toilets have a physical interface (finite trial and error procedure gets you the result you want). Would you imagine the pain trying to talk to one of these things (if they had an AI), or using one through a touch interface ?
Well hacking some json receiver into the squirty toilet seat so you can say "Alexa, wash my bottocks" is now going to have to be done.
Re: Share and Enjoy! (Score:5, Informative)
It's not "enema"
It's Stop, Butt Rinse, Butt Rinse (gentle, for hemorrhoids), Feminine Wash, and Air Dry.
Opening the cover for those controls you usually only mess with once is just for comedic effect. But those controls are for moving the jet forward or backward to bullseye the target area, stream strength, pulsed or non-pulsing streams, temperature, and seat warming settings.
Yeah, we had one of these. Don't knock them till you try them, your sphincter will thank you later, especially when wiping is like trying to get peanut butter out of a shag carpet.
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Don't knock them till you try them, your sphincter will thank you later, especially when wiping is like trying to get peanut butter out of a shag carpet.
To be fair, peanut butter smells worse.
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(my eyes are watering from laughing at this response)
You needed to include the "this may cause you to spray your coffee on your keyboard" warning WRT the peanut butter/shag carpet comment.
It's way too much reality for me.
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Butt Rinse, Butt Rinse (gentle, for hemorrhoids),
I thought one of those buttons (from clues in TFS) is for hot air to dry. I just assumed that was what the third button did. Are you saying it actually is just a different spray?
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http://www.cfaccessories.com/i... [cfaccessories.com]
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You sit, you shit, you wipe, stand and flush.....?
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And if you can't figure out which one is flush, just leave it. It sucks for the next guy, but you're not being an asshole on purpose.
Re:That Quarter (Score:4, Insightful)
If the tourists can't figure out which one is flush, that's a GREAT reason to standardize the pictograms!
Re:That Quarter (Score:4, Informative)
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The pictograms are for the advanced functions.
Tentacles? One would hope...
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Every toilet that I've seen in Japan had the regular metal button or lever on the water bowl for the flush.
You must not have been there long. I have seen many that are much more complicated than that. Most don't even have a single "flush" button/lever, but two. One for a big (poop) flush, and one for a smaller (urine only) flush.
As long as I we critiquing Japanese restrooms, can we gripe about the sinks too? All around the world, sinks have the hot water on the left, and the cold on the right ... except Japan, where they are connected randomly, and often unlabeled. For an otherwise organized and efficient soc
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Here in the US all sinks have labeled handles, and they might be backwards because we have a lot of Homers and a blue collar work culture of just pointing the new guy at a task and saying, "figure it out." Even chances the labels are wrong, or the hot and cold are really swapped.
If you stay in the cattle sections you only get one temperature anyways so no problem.
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I used to live in a town with artesian water - stuff from very deep underground that comes up hot and under pressure. The water pipes in town were on the surface or close to it in a lot of places.
In the height of summer the "cold" tap would range from cup of tea temperature to scalding if you let it run long enough.
In my house the "hot" tap was fed from a tank at the back of the stove. In summer it was too hot to use the
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And if you can't figure out which one is flush, just leave it. It sucks for the next guy, but you're not being an asshole on purpose.
Truer words were never spoken.
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Flush is in the usual place.
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Ok, I've never been to Japan, but seriously, how complex is it for a toilet?
You sit, you shit, you wipe, stand and flush.....?
Nope. Sit, shit, flush, wash, dry.
If you get a western room in a hotel they'll provide toilet paper but the cleaning staff will know you have an unwashed sphincter and while they will be outwardly polite to you, they will internally hate you and your dirty dirt hole.
The food in Japan is awesome though.
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It's not as big a waste as flushing all that toilet paper down the bog, like in the USA.
Eight function toilet? (Score:2)
I can think of three, maybe four, but beyond light flush, heavy flush, bidet, and drier, what are the other four functions?
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Re:Eight function toilet? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can think of three, maybe four, but beyond light flush, heavy flush, bidet, and drier, what are the other four functions?
After my first trip to Japan, I bought one of those superseats. Mine features a heated seat with different settings, front bidet for the ladies, back bidet for us all, settings for water temperature. And I didn't even buy the iffy-spiffy one.
Home Depot sells them. Once you've used them, you'll wonder why we use paper. Think about it: if you get poop on your hand, would you just wipe it or properly clean it with soap and water? Nevermind, I know the answer. So why do you settle for just wiping down there?
More Space Please (Score:3)
I can think of three, maybe four, but beyond light flush, heavy flush, bidet, and drier, what are the other four functions?
After my first trip to Japan, I bought one of those superseats. Mine features a heated seat with different settings, front bidet for the ladies, back bidet for us all, settings for water temperature. And I didn't even buy the iffy-spiffy one.
Home Depot sells them. Once you've used them, you'll wonder why we use paper. Think about it: if you get poop on your hand, would you just wipe it or properly clean it with soap and water? Nevermind, I know the answer. So why do you settle for just wiping down there?
In the US there is more space. Plenty of space for a bidet. Incorporating the bidet function into the toilet seat is just a space saving method that is appropriate for the tiny bathrooms in Japan.
Re:More Space Please (Score:4, Interesting)
Even with unlimited space it makes sense. No need to get up, pants around your ankles, and shuffle over to the bidet. When you are finished washing and the drier has done most of the work, you will probably want toilet paper unless you have a butt towel, and the toilet is the ideal place to dispose of it.
Also you don't need a second heated seat for the separate bidet, and it's one less thing to clean.
Oh yes, Japanese toilets are self cleaning.
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Even with unlimited space it makes sense. No need to get up, pants around your ankles, and shuffle over to the bidet. When you are finished washing and the drier has done most of the work, you will probably want toilet paper unless you have a butt towel, and the toilet is the ideal place to dispose of it.
Also you don't need a second heated seat for the separate bidet, and it's one less thing to clean.
Oh yes, Japanese toilets are self cleaning.
But with a separate toilet you can rest your latte on the toilet while you use the bidet.
West coast, best coast!
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In the US there is more space. Plenty of space for a bidet. Incorporating the bidet function into the toilet seat is just a space saving method that is appropriate for the tiny bathrooms in Japan.
That depends. If you're dealing with somebody out of the tiny house movement, or a house that's just plain lacking in bathrooms with not much space for wedging the ones it needs in? You might end up with a bathroom with a toilet, a sink, and everything tiled so you can use the whole thing as a shower stall. I've looked at an example--the only bathroom the house came with was so insanely laid out that the sole reason to believe that it was, in fact, built into the house was because inside bathrooms had be
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I'd bet that the vast majority of bathrooms in existing residences in the US don't have a suitable space for a bidet (normally put against a wall) and that most don't even have the square footage in the bathroom to accommodate one without eliminating another feature if the bathroom were completely remodeled.
And, even if there was a suitable space, putting in the plumbing (esp. waste line) could be quite expensive and disruptive. Running an additional electrical outlet is much cheaper.
We are going to have one installed when we remodel the bathroom. The useless water jet bath thing that came with the house is going away, so there will be plenty of space to have a bidet, more storage and a shower that isn't horrible.
Staying in Europe for a few weeks converted me to bidets.
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I live in the western US outside of California, and the majority of private home bathrooms I've seen have not had sufficient space for something like this. Most of the bathrooms I've seen that could accommodate such a thing without a major remodel have been in expensive houses, not ones that ordinary people live in.
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Don't knock it until you've got to try washing your arse instead of wiping it.
A) Save money not buying toilet paper
B) No itchy arse due to inadequate wiping
C) Unnerve your guests by having them try to work out what to do when there's no paper
D) ???
E) Profit!
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Then as of tomorrow, those people will not be true 'muricans.
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I lived in a 2500 square foot house with about 1500 devoted to a huge living room and all the rest of the rooms squished around the edges. We don't live there any more.
Re:Eight function toilet? (Score:5, Insightful)
So why do you settle for just wiping down there?
Because I don't use my butt for typing, shaking hands, conveying food to my mouth, scratching...
Re:Eight function toilet? (Score:4, Funny)
"Because I don't use my butt for typing, shaking hands, conveying food to my mouth, scratching..."
Apparently I'm doing it wrong.
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Apparently I'm doing it wrong.
I dread to think how long it took you to post this comment. Kudos on not getting thrown out of the library before you did it, though.
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So why do you settle for just wiping down there?
Because I don't use my butt for typing, shaking hands, conveying food to my mouth, scratching...
Unless you are scratching your butt, where is it an active participant in the scratcher-scratchee interaction.
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I personally don't like the idea of any water coming up from the _toilet_ onto me. How clean are the spray nozzles? How well maintained is the tubing running to the spray nozzles?
No: I'll settle for wiping off what I can... and doing my own proper cleaning that evening in the shower with soap.
Re: Eight function toilet? (Score:2)
The nozzle is just under the seat, not in the lower part of the bowl. Most modern Japanese toilets have the nozzle on a retractable wand that is always out of the "drop zone" and emerges only when commanded to do so with the controls.
So no, you cannot pee or crap on them* and they keep pretty clean on their own. But there is also a button that will extend it for a wipe down.
*If you push the button while dropping a load, all bets are off. If you push it while peeing, it'll piss back at you, but the modern To
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How well maintained is the tubing running to the spray nozzles?
As well maintained as the tubing running to the faucets that you rinse your toothbrush with.
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The water comes from the mains directly, not the toilet tank. It's basically the same as what comes out of the tap. It's usually heated by a little coil just before being sprayed out. The nozzle is self cleaning, with a combination of self-washing and UV sterilisation.
In the last few years they have started adding tanks for detergent as well. Most of it is used to clean the bowl after every flush, but I think some is used on the nozzle too if I recall.
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You haven't eaten at my company's cafeteria.
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The Japanese take daily baths/showers as well (and also a ritual where you wash before entering a public bath or hot spring), so I think there's more to it than shower culture.
As for "without agitation" the force these things use is insane - obligatory car analogy: Compare to washing your car. If you use a garden hose you need a sponge and soap. But, after a major rainstorm, every car on the block glistens after experiencing nothing but the sheer force of water. This is a rainstorm directed squarely onto
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How does it clean with just water?
I think most people have no clue of the amount of water pressure available on most of these toilets. Somebody posted a link to a photo down thread, but this isn't your typical European bidet with the water pressure that sort of "oozes" out like a gentle faucet or something. Most of the Japanese toilets can start at that low level of pressure, but you can generally turn them up so high you could basically give yourself an enema with one.
Re:Eight function toilet? (Score:5, Funny)
6) join with four other vehicles to create a larger machine
7) join your larger machine to two others the create the Might Flushtron
8) intimate function to assure very satisfactory toilet experience...
please remain seated
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Japan turned toilets into rocket science. Let's hope they don't turn rockets into toilet science.
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Japan turned toilets into rocket science. Let's hope they don't turn rockets into toilet science.
Hey now, toilet science is half the space program!
Re:Eight function toilet? (Score:5, Funny)
Alternate implementation (Score:5, Funny)
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I don't know anything about seashells but I knitted a really nice sweater yesterday.
Men, don't press the button marked "ATR" (Score:2)
It's an Automatic Tampon Remover.
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Or maybe this is all just my opinion and I shouldn't state this stuff like it's fact, right?
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Why would a Japanese toilet have markings in Latin characters? Besides that, that wasn't funny.
Have you seen any Japanese magazines? Latin characters, called romaji, are just 37 more characters to be added to their written symbols already numbering thousands to be used whenever it is more appropriate.
Buttons would be nice !!! (Score:3)
Years ago, while on vacation in Japan, I stepped into a bathroom only to find a large room with a row of holes in the floor and trapeze like handles (such as on a subway car) suspended from above.
I really didn't need to go that bad.... and used the tree in the corner instead.
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I was working in Singapore once. At the facility, they had Western toilets. Above the toilets, they had instructions for the locals telling them "not to stand on the lids" when they took a crap. Seems they weren't used to sitting on one and were used to squatting over a hole to dump their load.
That brought on a whole different cultural perspective regarding what we consider to be common.
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Handles suspended from above? You must have found the deluxe room. Even the one at the airport requires careful balance.
Urban Japanese must be just as put off by the squat toilets as we are, as evidenced by my finding bathrooms with only western style toilets in many office buildings and train stations (even outside the touristy areas).
Drunk at 2:00AM in Tokyo no longer be hazardous? (Score:3)
I've not spent a lot of time in Japan but on future trips I will have a little nostalgia remembering coming in after a long night of Karaoke and trying to figure out how to relieve myself without flooding the bathroom.
Of course, that option is a lot better than the ubiquitous hole in the floor with a shell that you squat over that my wife always wondered why I took pictures of.
Happy Poopy Time (Score:4, Funny)
For being under the bottom, that's over the top! (Score:2)
I don't stay seated when flushing (Score:2)
If I'm pushing a button that I think means flush I have already stood up and adjusted my clothing beforehand in order to avoid *any* possible complications from that operation. These certainly include unexpected jets of water coming from the bowl.
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They make lids for a reason. Actually, more than one. Ever seen the aerosolized particles that come out of a flushing toilet? That ends the whole "Seat down, lid up" argument.
A little too late. (Score:4, Insightful)
As Japan prepares for an influx of overseas visitors during the 2019 rugby World Cup and the Tokyo Olympics the following year...
What good is standardizing the pictographs now? Toilets stay in service for decades before being replaced. So unless they are going to have some sticker campaign to relabel all the ones already out there, it's too late.
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Toilets stay in service for decades before being replaced.
These aren't your western mechanical toilets. These are electrical, likely made in China with a Japanese name on it and running buggy software which the vendor refuses to fix instead offering to sell you a new shit shitter every 2 years. Plus your old toilet doesn't have 4K so why are you still using it you luddite. Throw it away like the electronic disposable crapper it is and get yourself some modern technology.
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IME the Chinese parts suppliers are very happy to update firmware and push out an update in just a few hours with little or no testing, and the only reason westerners have trouble getting the updates is that we don't read Chinese.
Japanese can read the Chinese well enough to send the right email to get the updates.
Plus, they might really be able to get them standardized in the main tourist areas for the sporting events. They don't have to update the whole country to get a noticeable improvement.
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Of what if you can't use the thing because it is busy downloading updates.
Wait until there is an IOT toilet, and then it gets infected with malware so that it sprays you with cold water instead of warm.
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They make clip on covers with replacement button caps for customers who want them in languages other than Japanese. I imagine they will do the same for these new symbols in places that want to upgrade.
Also, stuff gets replaced in Japan more often than the West, and toilets are modular. You can replace the control panel, the seat or the whole thing.
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Because an enlightened society is one in which adults plant trees who's shade they'll never sit in.
But enough about bonsai ...
Standard Buttons? (Score:2)
Standard Buttons? So like, the first button is for small flush and the other one is for big?
Japanese toilet pictography (Score:2)
I fear where this might go [lusipurr.com]. (NSFW?)
Having been to Japan... (Score:2)
I can say that it isn't really that complicated. Yeah, there are a few buttons. You just try them one at a time to see what happens. What's the worst that can happen?
So what does (Score:2)
Can someone tell me what the upside down bird held aloft by a water fountain do? (I'm aware what it really represents but when I first saw it it reminded me of how kids draw birds.)
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it's not too hard to figure out through trial and error.
That could be dangerous as a man if you press the tampon removal button.
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We have a bidet toilet seat on our toilet at home. There is a women's cleansing option, and yes, of course, I have tried it out. The spray just hits a slightly different spot. Still shoots at the crack, just lower down, missing the actual butt hole. Don't worry, it won't pulverize your nads.
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Power wash with degreaser option of course.