日本のトイレ　（Japanese Bathroom）

21st February – 如月

Japan has got very weird and different but useful things in their daily living.

One of the example can be the bathroom, toilet.

It is famous that Japan has the squat style toilet called 和式トイレ (Washiki toire).

Many non-Japanese people confuse how to use this types of toilet, but nowadays, there are less Washiki toilet around and have more normal toilets around.

If you have a friend in Japan, please have a look at their bathroom at home. Many Japanese houses have toilets with sink on the top of the water tank. So people can wash their hand before touching the door knob. This hand-washing water is from the tank and firstly wash the hand then go into the toilet so it is clean and a good way to reduce the amount of water. Also some houses have slipper in the toilet room, this is for not bringing dirt and virus from the toilet outside the room.

Furthermore, people might surprise that some of the Japanese toilet seats are warm. Some toilet also flash automatically once leaving from the toilet seat so that people won’t forget to flash. Japanese toilet has so much feature to make the time in the toilet room as comfortable as possible!

However, because of those evolution, there might be people who confuse with all the buttons in the bathroom…like this ウォシュレット(washlet)

Even most Japanese people would not know how to use some of the features – me too!

Here I would like to explain some of the useful functions:

–The flash button (At the top left 2 buttons): left to flash big and right to flash smaller. Using this depending on the situation can reduce the water waste!

–Toilet opening button (At the top right 3 buttons): pressing one of these to open the toilet lid, so that you don’t need to touch the lid. Can adjust the angle of the lid here

–おしりbutton / やわらかbutton (Oshiri button / Yawaraka button in the middle with hip sign): those wil splash warm water from nozzle to clean up the hips. Sit on the seat deeply before pressing the button. The small button bwtween those two can move the nozzle to change the position. Using this cleaning function too long will damage the skin so use this for few seconds.

–ビデbutton (Bide button in pink next to the hip sign): this one can be used only by ladies after urination.

The red button at the left is to stop the function, and the button at the very right is to dry the skin.

There are rumors that the Washlet is very dirty – this can be true as the nozzle might be dirty with water splashes. Nowadays, the toilet brand TOTO sells portable Washlet so if you are interested it is good to have your own washlet rather than using the public ones!

In the department stores, there are a button for emergency (Normally red button and covered around). Please be careful not to press this button by mistake!

For the privacy, Japanese toilet have no gap between the floor and door, plus there can have a button to make sounds, called 乙姫(Otohime) – this can conceal the sound of excrement.