Sandwich of Ruin!

Time Out For toilet Talk. . . Again

If you've read my meandering ramblings for any amount of time, you know that I have a favorite standby topic: namely, anything that has to do with bathrooms and toilets and bodily functions of the excratory persuasion. Potty talk ROCKS.

I don't intend to be gross here. Rather, my intent is to shed light on a woeful lack of innovation when it comes to American toilet technology. American toilets are boring, people. American toilets are basically chairs with holes in them. There is nothing exciting about American toilets and I, for one, am all for making toilets exciting and entertaining.

I know, I know. Simply by saying American toilets are boring is probably unpatriotic and worthy of an Ashcroftian dressing down that includes 80 lashes with a clydesdale harness, complete with large bells. But, trust me on this one. I know from worldly experience that American toilets just aren't up to snuff.

I lived in Japan for a year, and in that time, I think it's safe to say, I went to the bathroom once or twice, and probably quite a bit more than that. Like, daily. And, I'm here to tell you, the Japanese have the art of toilet innovation down to a Da Vinci polish. To sit upon a Japanese toilet is to sit briefly upon the future. And no, I'm not exaggerating.

My first introduction to a Japanese toilet came about while I was staying in a hotel for about a week before my family and I found a more permanent apartment. Not surprisingly, during that week, I had to go to the bathroom. During my first day there, even, if you can believe that. I stepped into the bathroom, and there, before me, was the biggest toilet I had ever seen in my life. The tank on that toilet could just as well have been a water tower. It. Was. HUGE!

In addition to its enormous size, that alien toilet featured buttons rather than a conventional handle flushing mechanism. Of course, I didn't realize that until I was well into my bathroom-going duty. I should note here that, because I was in Japan, the toilet buttons were labeled in Japanese, so there were a lot of buttons and I had no idea what they did. I felt like I was trying to land the space shuttle, except the space shuttle didn't smell all that great.

So, there I sat, confronted with a panel of strange buttons and a societally ingrained sense of duty that I had to at least TRY flushing that monumental thing. With a trembling hand, I pushed one of the buttons. Nothing happened. Nothing happened, that is, until I realized the toilet seat was getting noticeably warmer. Ohhhhh, so that's a toilet seat heater. Good to know, but I still had a toilet to flush.

I pushed a different button, and that button activated a mechanism that did strange and disturbing things to my backside. Three relatively powerful streams of water shot forth from the bowl and came together to spritz my behind. It was a fascinating sensation but, seeing as how the toilet had not yet been flushed, it was also pretty gross. I pushed the same button again, and the rear wash was discontinued.

My third button attempt was met with somewhat, sort of, kind of, success. The toilet flushed. Or, at least it PARTIALLY flushed. You see, the Japanese have developed toilets that allow you to choose how much of a flush you want. You can flush it entirely, which is what I wanted to do, or you can flush it just a little bit, thus saving water. I pushed the partial flush button, which was not nearly enough to dispose of my bathroom work, which basically just did a little do-si-do around the bowl and then came to rest pretty much where it started.

It wasn't until button #4 that I finally found the full flush option. And what a flush it was! The entire contents of that massive toilet tank went into that successful flush. I could have put an anvil in that bowl and it would have been sucked into the sewers. That toilet flush was so powerful, I think it produced a miniature black hole right there in that little hotel bathroom. It was amazing!

And that was 10 years ago! The advancements in Japanese toilet technology since that time have been great indeed, including the addition of more buttons that, among other things, play music, feature colored lights and a host of other entertaining features. According to the World toilet Organization, which must be a little-known branch of the U.N., and which has its own toilet.org/hp/wto_hp.htm">Web site, Japanese toilets toilet.org/articles/articles_per_japanesetoilets.htm">will be the standard to which all other toilets will aspire.

I certainly hope so.

Posted by Ryan at February 5, 2004 12:14 PM