Japan's terrifying techno-toilets will be made foreigner friendly, vow makers Japan’s electronic toilet-makers have vowed to clean up the baffling symbols on their techno-khazis so anyone can crimp one off in the Land of the Rising Sun “with peace of mind”. Kitamura Yen of the Japan Rest Room Industry Association said, in a statement on that august organisation’s website, that the industry had decided …
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"Why isn't there an option to make spray go round in little circles?"
I'm assuming that the two options are there to differentiate between those of us who have one bottom, and those of us who have both front and back bottoms.
A circular motion option would only be required for a) unfortunate owners of a side bottom or b) people who have recently partaken of a dodgy chinese takeaway at a folk festival who are experiencing, erm, explosive consequences...
>Why isn't there an option to make spray go round in little circles?
You'd then have to provide an option for clockwise and one for counter-clockwise*, otherwise you'd be fingered for discrimination against one or the other preference. Let's keep in mind that the movement at hand is intended to simplify matters.
* counter-clockwise (CCW) != anti-clockwise
I've got a Toto Washlet (retrofit seat model) and the "bidet" option is for lady-type washing while the "cleansing" option is for solid waste. The buttons are color coded in case the hairstyle indication is too subtle. There's also an option for oscillation (x-axis, so to speak) and target positioning (y-axis). The instructions are, thankfully, in English.
Quite good icons compared to some recent ones for Operating Systems.
Unlike the NASA torture machines called toilets, for microgravity, the toilets the Aliens use on their starships are pleasant. They are curiously similar to the Japanese ones.
“Good, just try and rest,” she urged. “I will put up navigation plots superimposed on the camera feeds. The bright line is the Intergal One starship and its torch drive. Let me know if you are thirsty or need to use the personal waste facility next door. It’s simple to operate and suitable for both sexes and most species. We can cut the thrust to one gee if you need it.”“Every species has two sexes?” asked Bill.
“Yes,” agreed Mikle, “some say it’s evolutionary pressure and others claim intelligent design.”
Ed was sceptical of the idea of a simple to use space toilet. They had all used their own on the shuttle before the flitter rendezvoused with them. It was hardly suitable for humans. They all had then added adult nappies. He watched the display, which looked like very large pane of glass. He could see a pair of tracks. It looked like the couches and the panel had two positions. The image was very high quality and high resolution with no frame rate flicker even in peripheral vision, but like all the video feeds it was monochrome. He wondered why they didn’t have a colour screen. Then he realised they should have had an anthropologist or something. Understanding the alien cultures and motivations was surely as important as the science.
Later:
Back at her starship apartment, Janethra announced she had to go to a meeting and then would be going to bed. She showed them how to work the bathroom.“You didn’t use the toilet in the flitter?” wondered Gemma.
“I did, it was just like here, built in bidet function.”
“The away team never mentioned it either. Why didn’t you mention it?”
“I didn’t think it was important,” explained Jack, “the Japanese have them.”
“Oh.”
(From "The Solar Alliance" by Ray McCarthy)
Where the toilets are a metaphor for everything else there. Extremes of modernity and tradition. Something which was drawn to my attention when I went into a JR station bathroom to find a musical, heated, bum-washing, auto-drying toilet followed by, some days later, a visit to a squat toilet in an underground station.
Squat toilets are usually public and quite frankly lead to more spillage as the "squatting area" is usually level with the tiling. A healthy position? Yes, but really the toilet shouldn't be designed in such a way to cause major problems depending on whether or not your stool is as healthy as it should be.
Honestly, a normal toilet is really the most hygienic way of going about it. You pick up more germs touching the many door handles you undoubtedly come in contact with throughout the day (which you more than likely directly transmit to mouth/eyes), while your business is guaranteed to be contained unless you purposefully miss, dip your hands in it and them smother yourself with it.
I believe the same is true of using toilet paper. It cleans what might otherwise require unpleasantly strong bursts of water to remove, allows you to wet the tissue if needed, and you (or rather, you're supposed to) wash your hands afterwards anyway.
I find a lot of arguments in favour of different toilets and cleaning methods tend to be more like excuses for lack of proper infrastructure and plumbing.
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The pictograms explained:
1 raise lid, you have to have this because there's always someone that puts the lid down so you have to raise the lid while trying to undo your jeans while trying not to pee yourself
2 raise seat and remember to press again because certain people don't like the seat left up
3 big dump
4 little dump
5 wash and wax
6 power shower for those messy incidents
7 waft the smell around to everybody and appreciate it
8 panic button, stop everything
Higher specification washlets (the correct word) have had auto sensors which open the lid as you approach and close it afterwards for at least 5 years.
BTW commentards who have no personal experience of a washlet should refrain from sharing their ignorance.
Once experienced, the process of washing up with:
- temperature and pressure (adjustable of course) controlled water
- directed at just the right spot (adjustable of course)
- drying up with temperature and pressure controlled (adjustable of course)
air
is somehow superior to smearing the remainder of your shit around your anus and walking out
Relatively advanced home washlets have personal buttons for each user which can store the variables
Japan .... it's another world
C'mon microsoft!
How about another new Mugabe Standard ? You know, one no one needs or wants, and one not even you can comply with?
OTOH, this one might be easier for you ...
After all, it seems somewhat appropriate ...
oh dear, being the long-nosed (unwashed), I've lived my whole life under the clearly mistaken impression toilet has just ONE function.
p.s. but I love the icons, especially the "press here for anal stimulation" and "here for double penetration". Obviously I didn't know you can have a threesome with a toilet either! The rest of the lot is too obscene to even consider...
How nice not to have to use toilet paper. Great for the handicapped persons like me. But they had better use a fire hose if they are going to use water to clean my crap up of my behind. It has to be blasted off. Other than that I think it is a better toilet than they build here in America and I will replace my toilets when they come out and all the bugs are worked out. I wonder if they are going to call the American version the ass blaster 2000?
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