‘stayiing in a hotel in Osaka this week. Some interesting things:
— The bathroom has a typical big mirror, covering the entire wall over the sink. As usual, it was fogged over when I got out of the shower, except for one rectangular area over the sink, just big enough to see your face. I touched it an found out this area of the mirror had a heating pad installed behind the mirror in this area. ‘pretty neat. Has anyone installed something similar in the USA?
— In the weird dep’t was the electric toilet. A conventional flush toilet, with an electric add-in that included a heated seat, and bidet functions. Strange.
Replies
Hmmmmm that is strange. I read a book on Japanese traditional arhitecture once that a customer gave me when he wanted to incorporate some Japanese features in a design. Apparantly thier bathroom consists of a 6x8 inch hole in the floor over which one squats. Ididn't incorporate that particular feature.
I guess they've come along a ways since then.
Excellence is its own reward!
That electric mirror definitely wouldn't sell in an Amish household!
Excellence is its own reward!
Strange, perhaps, but nice ideas. Although a bidet should be separate. Why does it seem weird to Americans when other cultures have higher standards of personal cleanliness than our own? Besides, you can always use a bidet to wash sweaters in.
Have good time if you are still in Osaka. I'd love to visit Japan. Piffin wants you to bring him back a present.
"Mr Robertson, your predecessor, an excellent librarian, savaged three people last week and had to be destroyed."--???
Edited 10/23/2002 11:48:27 PM ET by Theodora
The bidet wasn't weird; see them all the time in European hotels. Implementing it with an electric add-in to an existing toilet was the weird part. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't think a toilet should have electric switches on LED's on it.
'love the heated mirror, though.
Oops! That part didn't occur to me!"Mr Robertson, your predecessor, an excellent librarian, savaged three people last week and had to be destroyed."--???
Speaking of electricity and toilets...
I have reason to believe that one of the big toilet manufacturers is testing a model with a built-in battery operated fan and a charcoal filter to......let's say......cleanse the air. I ain't making this up--I know someone asked to be a beta tester of the product.
Had a friend who taught english in Tokyo Japan. She was explaining how expensive land is. Over $1000 US per month for nothing more than what we would call a studio. So the bathroom/shower was THE room. They will find anyway possible to cram as much as they can into the space available. A bidette in the toilet would save about 6 sq feet of floor space plus manuvering room say 10 sq feet? Let's say the whole apartment is 400 sq feet (ie 20x20) So that would be 2,5% of the months rent for the bidette. Or $25 us just to wash yer keester.
Interesting comment. What countries are you writing about that have higher standards of cleanliness. My experience with some Europeans has been that many don't come up to common American standards.
Bidet usage is, in some areas, in leu of taking a shower. Many, especially Italians, French, Turks and Greeks seem to go a week or more with what I know as a whores bath. A scrub of face, armpits and groin with a wash cloth in stead of a shower or full bath. At the time I thought that a shower a day, unless camping, was average so the more fragrant population was a mild surprise.
A frequent comment in France and Italy was for women to claim we smelled nice and clean and for the men to think we were covering up or being dishonest by not flaunting our "masculinity". At least one Arab claimed that you can't trust anyone who will not share his "breath". The marginal level of oral hygiene combined with a cultural preference for close talking took no small degree of tolerance to accept without gagging in this area.
The Nordic areas, Sweden, Finland seemed to give us competition for general cleanliness. Germans and Belgians seemed about equal depending on where you were. Off hand the only group that consistently seemed better scrubbed were the Japanese.
I will say that most places seemed to have cleaner countrysides and especially cities. Much less litter and clutter. But the people them selves a little more gritty. Different strokes I guess.
A few throughts:
1) It wasn't so long ago that the "Saturday night bath" was the tradition in North America.
2) You find those hole-in-the-floor toilets all over the world, certainly all over Japan, China, Taiwan, and the Far East. "Crappers" (named for their inventor) are really a Western Europe/NA thing, but are gaining ground elsewhere. We're deceived sometimes because most 3-star+ tourist hotels around the world are built to UK/American standards.
3) Our hygene routines are based on affluence (and more particularly a very large and affluent middle class), space, and abundance of water. It is driven by consumerism (soap, toothpast, mouthwash, shampoo, and even bathroom fixtures). Other places in the world have different values and resources..
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
As I recall, no-fog mirrors are a feature of some of the Robern bath cabinets. Very pricey. Maybe a little electric-blanket technology could be rigged into a recess let into the wallboard behind a standard stick-on mirror, and we could have what you saw in Japan. Inventors! Innovators! Jury-riggers! Step up to the plate and tell us how to do this for less than $100.
Gene
I can't tell you how to do it for less than $100.
But,
I can tell you how to do it for less than $131.
http://www.bathfixtures.net/electric_mirror.htm
Send me a check for $99 and I will get you a heater.
Found a source for $75
http://search.store.yahoo.com/cgi-bin/nsearch?follow-pro=1&vwcatalog=brandsmall&SearchBy=Brand&query=clearmirror&catalog=brandsmall
They are one of the online distributors for http://www.clearmirror.com/
Here is another brand.
Do a google on "electric mirror heater" and you will find a number of sources.
method 1) You get yourself one of those little warmer plates (the ones for coffee-cups are the cheapest, the ones for plates are larger) and hang it up behind the mirror.
method 2) This requires a DC power supply, not more than 12V. You go and get one of those add-on window defrosters (as these become ubiquitous in cars, they're harder to find) and bond it to the back of the mirror - put the power supply under the sink..
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
Don't know what it'd cost, but anyone puting in a radiant floor heating system could simply add some tubing in the wall behind the mirror. Keep it fog free most of the time.
The German toilets w/ the shelf in front were called "Pass in review" toilets by some GI's.
DonThe GlassMasterworks - If it scratches, I etch it!
Buddy of mine bought a Mercedes on the Euro delivery plan a few years ago. He picked it up in Germany and took off. Had problems with it in France near some beach resort town (can remember the name, but famous) so he wasn't too upset when the dealer told him it would take a couple of days to repair. He figured he'd go spend the day at the topless beach.
It was as advertised, but one thing he'd not heard about it was all the babes with the boobs also had hairy armpits. Wasn't the pleasurable day at the beach he had anticipated.
An old Brit friend told me when he was a kid they bathed weekly, but those stinky Frogs were two weeks or more.........Joe H
"Pass in review" reminds me of a Rhine river cruise I was once on where the men's john on the boat had a trough uninal at right angles to a clear window, 3ft to 6 ft high and about 1/2 meter wide, right off the main passageway!
Phill, and 4LORN1,
You both make good points. It was certainly not necessary for me to say "higher standards" or to imply that personal standards are the same thing as cultural norms. (Although "American Standard" is a pun I'd really like to have gotten into the conversation somewhere!)"Mr Robertson, your predecessor, an excellent librarian, savaged three people last week and had to be destroyed."--???
As I understand it some Japanese woman consider the visiting businessmen their 'american standard'. Let the thunder crack and the waves roar.
We're going on.
Phill, the Saturday night bath was the standard I grew up with. (I'm 73) BTW, I've read that Thomas Crapper essay and I believe it's a hoax. Sorry that I can't cite the evidence, but I think that it might have been a spoof by H. L. Menkin.
BJGardening, cooking and woodworking in Southern Maryland
Nope, Thomas Crapper was a real person; he ran Crapper Plumbing Stores in the London (UK) area, sold out to his partners and retired in 1904, and the last store contined until 1966 (I visited the store in 1961).
Invent is an interesting word. Crapper bought rights to Albert Giblin's patent (the valve that makes the whole thing work) and produced the first practical flush toilets..
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
When I was In Japan (1964) the public restrooms were unisex and consisted of a tiled floor with tiled holes in the floor, and you'd better have good balance because there were no grab bars.
Bob
"Rather be a hammer than a nail"
I was on a business trip to Italy a couple years ago and all the bathrooms featured "bombsights" (hole-in-the-floor). In their view, it was more sanitary than a toilet seat. It was hard for me to see it that way.
For two weeks, I "held it" until I got back to my hotel room at 6:30. On the night before my last day, we went out for too much food and WAY too much wine. The next day was just as you would imagine it - ugly. I was desperate enough to consider using the bombsight a couple of times, but just couldn't bring myself to it. I made it to 6:30, but thought I was going to explode as everyone was graciously saying good-bye.
"Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government."Jon
You were lucky! In China in a hospital, all they had was a bucket in the middle of the waiting room floor. Not kidding. Airport only had squat toilets. Hotel had all modern amenities.
I didn't FEEL lucky!"Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government."Jon
My favorite from China was the basket for your used paper; that didn't go in the hole at all. A little aromatic, to say the least. Different cultures, different methods. But the big tourist hotels usually had more amenities than the hotels that I can afford to stay in around North America.
I lived in Chile for a while in the early 70s. They also had a can next to the toilet for used paper, told me that the plumbing couldn't handle it. The TP available back then was called Comfort but it was anything but. Made of very rough, pulpy paper. Frequently had tree sap and small splinters in it. But times were tough and toilet paper was a luxury. A common sight in poorer areas was an old telephone book in the bathroom. Do your business, rip out a page and wipe...
"old telephone book" -
my mother still regales us with how poor our family was in the 30's, a telephone book was reserved for the ladies and considered a 'luxury', the Sears catalogs with the slick pages were horrible, especially when cold in central IL.
My oh my, have we all gotten soft.
PS - ALWAYS use the front of blackberry leaves when in the woods!
AK373, you've got the sequence wrong. Rip out a page of the phone book and start crumpling to soften it, do your business and wipe. Been there, done that. (got the tee shirt)
BJGardening, cooking and woodworking in Southern Maryland
Okay, Okay, I get it, this is reverse-Jeopardy:
Question: Things seen in a Japanese Bathroom?
Answer: Japanese
Regards,
Rework
In some Japanese hotel bathrooms they provide a stick figure label illustrating the way to sit on the john. My favorite one was a red circle with a diagonal slash "NO" over the image of a man standing on the seat to pee between his feet. No kidding.
The heated mirror in the Japanese bathroom is another example of them using a device that "we" (Americans) invented (ITW created the first one piece semiconductor self-regulating heated mirrors now commonly used for commercial trucking) in a unique and a novel way that we then go 'a ha!'.
"And if I started running around, declaring myself emporer, just because some moistened bink had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!" John Cleese, Monty Python's Holy Grail
"Supreme executive power derives from a mandate of the people, not by some farcical aquatic ceremony!"
"come see the violence inherent in the system....."
Jeff..............Al-ways look on......the bright......side of life...........
.......whistle.....whistle.......whistle........
"HELP HELP I'm being repressed"
"Bloody peasant"
Edited 10/26/2002 12:49:11 AM ET by jet
The Sears Roebuck catalog was a long standing tradition. You kept three years worth on hand. The newest was in the house for ordering presents. (The trick was assigning different colored crayons to everyone in the family. Anything you wanted was marked by you in your color.) Last years catalog in in the outhouse for reading. The two year old catalog, having been thumbed to softness by a years consideration, was for the wipe. When the new catalog arrived in the mail everything moved up a notch. You might keep the remains of a five year old catalog for visiting dignitaries. If you didn't vote for them they get this years.
I grew up in Indiana. Middle of corn country.
We used corn cobs.
Two red ones and a white one.
You used a red one. Then you used the white one to see if you needed the other red one.
Political discussion on this forum = The blind insulting the blind
Quittin' Time
Is that why most of the guys i know from Indiana think they are such tough arsses?
Think ???
: )Political discussion on this forum = The blind insulting the blind
Quittin' Time
Edited 10/26/2002 5:31:48 PM ET by Luka
My MIL is Japanese. we stayed with her family for three weeks in 1988. the toilets in the homes were much like ours except for the top of the tank, which had a small bowl with a water valve over it. it was for washing hands or anything else that needed cleaning. the toilet was also in a seperate room, away from the sink or bathing room. A traditional Japanese bath was to enter a tiled shower area and sit on a small stool with a bucket of water and soap. after washing thoroughly, the shower was used to rinse off with. You then climbed into a traditional Japanese soaking tub of hot mineral water for an hour or so of relaxing. These tubs were much much deeper than our standard tubs, but alas also shorter. I could only manage about a half hour soak in the water up to my neck, because my knees were scrunched up to near my chest. now if they they made one of those tubs for a 6"1" frame I would have one. Everyone in the family used the same soaking water, because they had already bathed befor getting in the tub. A cold Japanese beer while setting in that hot water was a perfect end to a day of sight seeeing and fine Japanese food.
As an aside; My mother in law is an atomic bomb survivor. She was 13 years old and less tha 1/2 mile from ground zeroe when the bomb hit Hirosima. Everyone should visit the Peace Memorial Musem in Hirosima, it will change you perpective of nuclear war.
Dave
Less than a half mile ?
I thought that everything at that range was simply incinerated.
Political discussion on this forum = The blind insulting the blind
Quittin' Time
>Less than a half mile ? I thought that everything at that range was simply incinerated.
Not true. The building now called the A-Bomb Dome was at ground zero, directly under the bomb which exploded at 2000 feet. Some pictures of it and other buildings are at http://www.nvccom.co.jp/abomb/indexe.html
A few, most protected by something very substantial, suffered less trauma. Some were incinerated, some apparently vaporized.
When I was young we visited the various memorials and relevant sites. I still remember a large marble front common to western banks but the bank was gone after the blast. There were several steps and on these steps was the shadow of a man flashed into the marble. The shadow was quite detailed and clearly shows the mans position. A tired but relatively casual pose like one might have if one had walked quite a way and had paused for a moment to take in the day and rest for the trip home. A ghostly snapshot recording a common scene at a historical fraction of a second.
South Korea, 1960s....the well-to-do had squatter porcelain toilets that was at floor level with flushing action, etc.
Bathroom floors were tiled with floor drains.
Sit-on toilets soon took over probably with increased cases of hemorrhoids.
Urban legends on boys' room methane explosions after match dropped into the crap pit while sneaking a cigarette. Burned donkey and back, etc.
Alan
Luka, you have to hear her tell the story to get the full impact of the horror.
She was late for school that morning and missed the train that would have taken her around the city. She took a street car in a direct rout across the city. As closely as we can surmise several things happened that let her survive while everyone else on the street car perished.
The car was on a bridge at the time of the explosion. She was the last person on the car and was leaning agianst the doors, because there were no seats available. The rest of this is pure conjector, as she does not remember anything about the few minutes following the detonation. The car was blown into the air and off of the bridge. The EMP cause a total electrical failure and the doors automatically failed to the open position. She fell or was blown out of the open door into the river about 30 feet below. She was under water durring the fireball expansion, and intial blast conditions. When she emerged from the river she was much further away from where she thought the bridge had been. From there you have to hear her tell of the two week odessy she had in trying to return to her home. Her mother died within the month from burns and radiation. Her father died a year later from radiation sickness, and she was raise by the oldest son and siblings. Of the seven children, four have died of cancer and a fith has cancer.
Japan is a mountinous country and even the larger cities have many large hills within them. The combination of terrain and the fact that it was a very low altitude air burst meant that there were sheltered pockets within the blast radius. All of these conditions and the river contributed to her survival.
Sorry to have strayed off the subject of this thread. My MIL is one of my favorite people in the world.
Dave
Thanks for the story. History and stories of other experience are the only chances humanity has to learn that death and pain wait for us all. We must not forget this. We have to find ways to live with and through this fact. So little time. So many lessons to be learned.
I wondered about who the man on the steps was and what happened to him. Maybe that is the point. Maybe the triggering of these questions is the positive outcome. It taught me something. I don't know his name but he has had a profound effect on my life.
I wish you and you mother-in-law well.
Did you ever make it out to the memorial to the Pacific War on Corregidore ? Another place that can touch you inside. http://corregidorisland.com/sectors.html
There aren't many places you can feel: Louisburg is one, the Tower of London is another.
.
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
Try hitting the "bombsight" on the Tshinconsin (sp - bullet train). First time was a thrill, had a hard time figuring which was the best way to moon/
Good Lord! I was worried about losing my balance as it was. I can't imagine squating over a hole while I was moving 150-180 MPH!!!!
Remember that scene in Kelly's Hero's where two guys were hiding behind an outhouse when it was hit by a shell. That's what I'd look like coming out of the john!
"Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government."Jon
The manufacturer of those toilets is TOTO, the American Standard of Japan. They have models with heated seats, heated jets of water that spray up to clean yourself well and I have even seen one with an electric arm that came out to put a protective sheet of paper on the seat. A small strip of the paper would hang down into the water so that when you finished and flushed it would pull the paper down the drain. Very expensive stuff.
The Germans, anal retentive jerks that they are, have toilets with a small shelf where we put the water basin. The hole is actually way at the front of the fixture. This allows you to inspect your business as it lays on the shelf before flushing. I hate those things.
I've seen those toilets in Austria and Germany. Though I've never actually spoken to a German Toilet Designer, I assumed it was a means for reducing the amount of water used and not for the inspection of "your business".
I will agree that it was mildly and oddly disturbing. Compared to the Italian experience though, it was nothing.
"Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government."Jon