Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Luxury Loo--I'm specin' one of these for my next booth

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 08-12-2003, 11:37 PM:

A funny Wired News article about Japan's Toto toilets here.

Luxury Loo: The Seat Also Rises

By Michelle Delio

02:00 AM Aug. 12, 2003 PT

Steve Marshall vividly remembers the night he was terrorized by a toilet.

Marshall, an embedded systems programmer, had just arrived in Tokyo to deliver a sales pitch. After a couple of hours happily spent swilling sake to celebrate the closing of a deal, he, not surprisingly, had to use the facilities.

"When I approached the toilet, the lid lifted automatically," said Marshall. "Then, as I stood in front of it, the seat also lifted. All I could think was, whoa … haunted bathroom! I just could not urinate for fear of what might happen next."

Marshall, like most other Americans who spend any time in Japan, eventually learned to use and even enjoy the high-tech toilets installed in many homes, offices and public spaces.

Soon, Americans can have their very own brainy bathrooms. Toto, Japan's largest toilet maker, plans to aggressively market its products here over the next few months.

"American toilet hygiene is very archaic," said Lenora Campos, Toto's U.S. public relations manager. "But people are savvier now. Bringing computer technology into the bathroom is an emerging trend. All that's needed is education and exposure to leading-edge products for Americans to see the benefits of really cutting-edge hygiene."

Exposure, at least of the unexpected sort, is exactly the problem with high-tech toilets, said Nathan Cohen, a British tattooist.

Cohen encountered a Toto toilet during a convention for skin artists recently held in Tokyo.

"So there I am, sitting on this sleek-looking loo, idly punching the buttons on this little panel next to the toilet, and all of a sudden my bum is right smack in the middle of the perfect storm," he said.

"Things are spraying, sloshing, squirting and swooshing. The theme from Jaws suddenly starts playing in my head, and I tell you I retracted my personal parts from that toilet very quickly," Cohen said.

"I see buttons, I press buttons," said Cohen. "And sometimes randomly pushing buttons does have unpleasant consequences -- but I never expected it to provoke a full-scale attack by a toilet."

Most of the toilet incidents that have befallen curious tourists in Japan were caused by people not being able to understand the Japanese-language labels on the toilets' control panels, Campos explained.

"I love Toto toilets," said Andrew Markham, a textile designer. "It's like an every-four-hour fiesta for your naughty bits. Plus, their features are pretty sensible stuff, once you get over giggling about the whole thing."

Several Toto toilets feature separate warm-water sprays mounted at the perfect angle for front-and-back cleanups, as well as an oscillating spray option and a warm air dryer to perk up one's posterior.

Toilets are available with automatic lid openers. And, once the lid opens, if one continues to linger hopefully in front of the toilet, the seat -- which can be set to warm and massage modes -- automatically rises also.

When the individual leaves, the toilet automatically flushes, the seat lowers, and the lid closes. And then the power catalytic deodorizer kicks in to eliminate any unpleasant odors.

Automatic seats may thrill the ladies, but here's something for the guys: Toto toilets are controlled by a battery-powered wireless remote control that operates all the options, which also are displayed on an LCD panel for times when the remote control has gone missing.

Even the heretofore simple flush has been reworked by Toto's obsessive engineers. Toto toilets don't simply flush -- they have a "cyclone flush engine" that produces a carefully calibrated sequence of three flushes.

During the first stage, the "rim-scouring cyclonic motion," a nozzle located at the back of the bowl fires a high-speed stream of water that scours the rim.

The second stage, "siphonic jet action," increases the water volume of the rapidly rotating current as it circles the bowl and "generates a quiet, skillfully-controlled flush, which minimizes noise and splash as the water's sustained swirling motion scrubs the bowl clean of all matter," according to Toto's product brochure.

The third stage is a final rim scouring, which cleanses the rim a second time and restores the bowl's tranquil water surface.

Despite all that specialized flushing, Toto toilets actually conserve water via sophisticated gravity and siphon systems. The loos also use a proprietary energy-saving technology. Upon installation, the toilets begin to record usage frequency, and then reprogram themselves weekly. During times when they remember infrequent use, they go into sleep mode, just like a laptop conserving its battery power.

Toto's product brochures make great bathroom reading, waxing on about the benefits of the high-tech toilets in a somewhat alarming but ultimately endearing fashion. Descriptions of luxury loos "gently glowing in the ambient light" abound.

"It may seem strange, but we feel our toilets do have an inner beauty," one Toto brochure confesses. "Maybe we're looking through our engineers' eyes, but it's there. You can see it. It's in our high performance flushing systems. Our specially designed trapways. It's everywhere."

Those who agree that Toto toilets are indeed a thing of beauty can purchase caps, shirts, mousepads and coffee cups with the company logo.

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[ 11-02-2003, 12:36 PM: Message edited by: Paul Mayer ]

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 08-12-2003, 11:49 PM:

Thank God they've moved up from pottying over a sink in the floor!

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 08-12-2003, 11:52 PM:

Rear cleansing? And what is the computer monitor for on the counter in the background?

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 08-13-2003, 03:06 AM:

A sink in the floor? Jeeze that must have been a luxury.

Many of the places I've been in the far east, Japan, Taiwan, China, had only a pipe "hole" in the floor to squat over and crap in and a hose to wash "it" down.

>>> Phil

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 08-13-2003, 06:16 PM:

I kid you not. When I lived in Japan in the late 1970's, I would encounter public restrooms that looked very much like our own. But instead of having a toilet in a bathroom stall there would be this porcelain like thing recessed down in the floor. You would have to squat over the thing to take a dump.

This kind of toilet would flush like any "western style" toilet. But unless you played catcher on a baseball team you would be likely to fall on your face or accidentally shit in your pants.

When faced with the prospect of using one of those kind of toilets, I just tried to hold it until I got home. [bs]

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 08-13-2003, 07:10 PM:

Ah yes, first-time encounters with asian squat-style toilets! Always good for a few laughs if you're into that kind of humor, which I am.

In 1995 I escorted a group of college-age cadets on an aviation exchange program trip to Japan. One of our first days there we went to Sea Paradise, a water theme park about an hour by train outside of Tokyo. After riding various high-G rides, the kids needed to visit the loo. As I'm waiting outside I hear screams from the girl's side, then laughing, then the exclamation "It's just a hole!" from these otherwise demure cadet officers. I think they ended up employing Bobby's technique of waiting until we got back to the hotel. Guess my cultural differences briefing on things like the loo wasn't quite thorough enough. [Smile]