Japanese toilets

I'll grant you it's a little bit odd to post a load of pictures of toilets, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Before we visited Japan I had heard about the electronic toilets, but encountering them everywhere was still amusing. It's one of those things that reminds you that places are still very different from each other as the world gets smaller.

They aren't really that difficult to work out, you just don't know what it's set to do automatically when you go in the cubicle! Sometimes the lid would open automatically, or sounds would play, or the seat would warm up. Some also had automatic flush functions, which seems like a really good idea, as long as it flushes at the time it's supposed too... otherwise...

They all had bidet type options, the symbols for those functions made it pretty obvious what would happen, but I didn't encounter any facilities that wanted to do it automatically, fortunately! Apparently a good tip if you do want to use them is to make sure you are sitting down before you press any of the buttons.

One of the toilets had a little basin on the top and the tap came on automatically after it had been flushed, that was quite a useful one.

On the other hand however I saw quite a few 'Japanese toilets', these remind me rather of old French toilets, but they have a slightly better design. The traditional Japanese loo is like a hole in the floor with a flush whereas the French one is more like a shower tray. Much easier to keep your feet dry with the Japanese version ;) Sometimes there would be lots of the old style toilet, then one labeled 'western style' which was usually a normal not-electronic loo. That was mainly at parks and temples, public areas.

I prefer the ones with all the buttons to the traditional style. I'm not sure having that many options on a toilet is necessary, but I rather miss the warm seat.