Today's Picture: 117 (5/23/2009)
May. 26th, 2009 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanHurrah! My computer has apparently decided to start recognizing my camera again, which means I can now download about a month's worth of photographs onto the HD. This in turn means the resumption of TPic. And so I give you the picture from Saturday the 23rd It's a doozy, and it is of:
Japanese toilet technology (primarily for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
metal_dog5's sake, to give her an idea of what we were discussing the other day).
I apologise for the blurriness of the picture. It was taken on the sly in the main restroom of the department store where I work; as said location attracts its fair shareof creepos, you can imagine I didn't have the luxury of getting the shot just right with my camera audibly bleeping away with each depression of the shutter button. (On the other hand, customers might not give it a second thought precisely because there are so many perverts about.)
Anyway, Japanese toilets come in three varieties: shallow trough in the ground, low-income housing Western style, and high-freaking-class. This toilet is high-freaking-class (usually found in department stores or upper middle class homes), as evidenced by its space age console. Going from the center of the console to the left we see: a button to press for a recorded loop of a toilet flushing called "Oto-hime" or "sound princess"1, the volume of which one adjusts with the buttons below it; a bidet specifically for one's ladybits, another bidet for the other bits, the "off" button for each control, and buttons to adjust the strength of the various bidets2.
From the far right toward the center of the console we have: an indicator display that shows exactly what the toilet is doing (in case, one assumes, one is unable to feel that jet of lukewarm water hitting one's ...). According to said display, at any given time the toilet may be: playing back a "flushing sound," cleaning the bidet nozzle, heating water for the bidet, warming the toilet seat with an electric current, or going into sleep mode to conserve electricity. And of course, next to this display we have my favorite feature: the "powerful deodorizer" that releases a miasma of noxious scent into the air should one desire it, for as long as the on button is toggled.
For as terrified of their evacuatory functions as most Japanese seem to be, they are also, rather inexplicably toilet connoisseurs. Many department stores offer a variety of toilets with various functions; there's often a map outside the restroom explaining which stalls offer what features so that a customer who wishes to use the ladybit bidet but doesn't care about deodorizing the stall after use can choose appropriately. Oh, Japan.
1Japanese are notoriously potty-shy; many Japanese women will stop mid-business if they hear you enter the restroom and there's no recording of waterfalls or flushes to disguise what they're doing. And a few months ago a friend at whose house we were having a party insisted that guests walk two blocks to the public restroom so that everyone else at the party wouldn't have to see them going in and out of the toilet in her house.
2Pretty much every foreigner in Japan has at least one humorous story about how they accidentally wreaked havoc on themselves or the bathroom stall by their inability to use these controls correctly.
That will be all.
Japanese toilet technology (primarily for
metal_dog5's sake, to give her an idea of what we were discussing the other day).I apologise for the blurriness of the picture. It was taken on the sly in the main restroom of the department store where I work; as said location attracts its fair shareof creepos, you can imagine I didn't have the luxury of getting the shot just right with my camera audibly bleeping away with each depression of the shutter button. (On the other hand, customers might not give it a second thought precisely because there are so many perverts about.)
Anyway, Japanese toilets come in three varieties: shallow trough in the ground, low-income housing Western style, and high-freaking-class. This toilet is high-freaking-class (usually found in department stores or upper middle class homes), as evidenced by its space age console. Going from the center of the console to the left we see: a button to press for a recorded loop of a toilet flushing called "Oto-hime" or "sound princess"1, the volume of which one adjusts with the buttons below it; a bidet specifically for one's ladybits, another bidet for the other bits, the "off" button for each control, and buttons to adjust the strength of the various bidets2.
From the far right toward the center of the console we have: an indicator display that shows exactly what the toilet is doing (in case, one assumes, one is unable to feel that jet of lukewarm water hitting one's ...). According to said display, at any given time the toilet may be: playing back a "flushing sound," cleaning the bidet nozzle, heating water for the bidet, warming the toilet seat with an electric current, or going into sleep mode to conserve electricity. And of course, next to this display we have my favorite feature: the "powerful deodorizer" that releases a miasma of noxious scent into the air should one desire it, for as long as the on button is toggled.
For as terrified of their evacuatory functions as most Japanese seem to be, they are also, rather inexplicably toilet connoisseurs. Many department stores offer a variety of toilets with various functions; there's often a map outside the restroom explaining which stalls offer what features so that a customer who wishes to use the ladybit bidet but doesn't care about deodorizing the stall after use can choose appropriately. Oh, Japan.
1Japanese are notoriously potty-shy; many Japanese women will stop mid-business if they hear you enter the restroom and there's no recording of waterfalls or flushes to disguise what they're doing. And a few months ago a friend at whose house we were having a party insisted that guests walk two blocks to the public restroom so that everyone else at the party wouldn't have to see them going in and out of the toilet in her house.
2Pretty much every foreigner in Japan has at least one humorous story about how they accidentally wreaked havoc on themselves or the bathroom stall by their inability to use these controls correctly.
That will be all.
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no subject
on 2009-05-26 09:44 am (UTC)I personally love using the bidet during that time because I feel a bit cleaner afterward. I did, however, think the deodorizer did something to my own ass, not to the air around my ass. I've also left puddles on the floor from not being able to turn the bidet off.
I also refuse to flush or press the sound button if I'm just doing number 1. I'd better be down for the count if I'm gonna use that annoying thing. I can't understand why takin' a wee is embarrassing, nor can I figure out why people hate the sound pads make when you open the wrapping. For God's sake, we're ALL women! For a country that will strip in a second and hop in a bath naked with each other, I can't understand their sense of "modesty." I am not ashamed that I don't have any.
no subject
on 2009-05-26 09:55 am (UTC)See here's the thing about Oto-hime. Like you say above, it's a bathroom. If you're in there it's pretty much to do one of three things. I'd never paid any mind to the sounds those three things make before coming to Japan, and I think I'd be more disturbed by someone who was in a bathroom stall but not doing them. To me, the constant pressing of Oto-hime pretty much a) broadcasts at nigh earsplitting volumes that You Are In The Bathroom Stall And Using It OMG, and b) how long you need to take to do so. Which again, are not things I ever noticed before coming to Japan.
And yeah, the whole onsen/bathroom dichotomy is one of the reasons why I really think the Japanese just have massive hangups over toilet functions. It's right up there with the girls in skirts so short their buttcheeks are hanging out asking me "Aren't you cold??? when I walk around outdoors in a long-sleeved shirt but no jacket. >.<
no subject
on 2009-05-26 09:53 am (UTC)Was it you that posted a ways back about the propensity of Japanese women to continually flush the toilet while they do their business so that no one will hear them? Because I have a vague recollection of having heard that before... nevertheless, I find it kind of amusing and interesting the things people do (I should have been a sociologist).
And I've seen pictures of the "shallow trough in the ground" type toilets and it makes me wonder whyyy? I don't think I could be a squatter... tmi? >.>
no subject
on 2009-05-26 09:57 am (UTC)Here's the thing about the troughs (which will be an upcoming TPic one of these days): they're fine for a non-urgent number one, but I refuse to use them for anything beyond. I have no idea how Japanese control the splash/splatter factor. (And how's that for seeing your TMI and raising you one?)
no subject
on 2009-05-26 10:32 am (UTC)Ahaha, yeah... that does sound a bit. Worrying. And pretty icky. Eugh. (I bow down to your greatness, thou hast squicked me. *bows down before thee*)
no subject
on 2009-05-26 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-05-27 03:32 am (UTC)no subject
on 2009-05-28 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-06-01 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-06-09 11:02 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-05-26 10:45 pm (UTC)I have been proven not so weird after all.....
I guess.
no subject
on 2009-05-27 03:28 am (UTC)But seriously, I never worry about that stuff because it's a bathroom...it's not like anyone is doing anything particularly clean in there and we all have off days...
no subject
on 2009-05-28 07:10 pm (UTC)Social Anxiety hangups. HA...here it's a disorder....there it's the norm. WEIRD.
no subject
on 2009-05-27 12:28 pm (UTC)