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Why America Is Losing the Toilet Race
- ekianjo 7y agoThis shows how bad is Toto (and other companies in the market in Japan) at exporting their products even though they are remarkably better across the board. Even if they don't make it in every home overseas you could imagine they at least tap in a kind of premium market, but no, they are close to doing nothing and don't have partnerships in most countries. Truly incompetent.
- bitwize 7y agoToto sells porcelain products in the USA, it just hasn't focused on marketing the Washlet until fairly recently. Whether that's due to negligence on their part, or American revulsion to the idea of toilets squirting you with water[0] is unknown. [0] Japanese toilets were long the butt of stand-up comics' jokes. I remember one such comic ending with the punchline "I'm being raped by a toilet!"
- wyattpeak 7y ago> even though they are remarkably better across the board I think you're pinning on incompetence a lot that has more to do with cultural mores. This doesn't seem remarkably better across the board to me. It seems neat to the technologist in me, but it also feels extraordinarily fussy, an accommodation for the weak or incapable. I recognise we should probably move to bidets, but I wouldn't look forward to the sidelong "is he a bit weird?" glances from guests. Warmed seats is a bit like fuzzy earmuffs: probably an improvement but something I feel like I shouldn't need. In some sense, I think trying to improve a toilet at all feels weirdly epicurean. I find this vaguely embarrassing to write, I'm not a particularly macho person and I don't like to acknowledge that sense of masculinity circumscribing my actions. But I think it would take a hell of a marketer to get me past that, especially at a steep price point, nevermind people who are openly manly.
- DonHopkins 7y agoThey should introduce refrigerated toilet seats for macho men, that clean your bottom with a vigorous squirt of icy water, then dry it with a refreshing blast of cold air.
- chopdcheez212 7y agoI’d buy that!
- DonHopkins 7y agoHow about a bidet with a retractable nozzle that sprays mouthwash to freshen your breath after you puke?
- crispinb 7y agoGood grief. Using expensively treated water to flush waste away is crude Victorian technology as it is - adding fusspot electronic detailing hardly improves it. Composting toilets at urban scale - now that would be tech worthy of the 21st century.
- blp 7y agoIf you then centralize the composters, for efficiency, the you really have something.
- kylek 7y agoI have this strange fascination with pneumatic tube systems (I wish we used them for everything). I think we just found a new use case.
- crispinb 7y agoThat could work if everyone reduced fibre intake ;) (I completely see the steampunkish appeal btw)
- DonHopkins 7y agoThen you'll just love Brazil! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teufz17PqoY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teufz17PqoY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xNnRBksvOU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xNnRBksvOU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuSDdJIcmHU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuSDdJIcmHU
- shirakawasuna 7y agoBidets use less water than it takes to make the toilet paper Americans use to excess.
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- joeblau 7y agoMy brother has one of these in his new condo. let's just say this toilet paper binge that we're on in the US isn't really impacting his life at all right now.
- _anastasia 7y agohttps://doineedtoiletpaper.com/ https://doineedtoiletpaper.com/
- joeblau 7y agoI LOL'd. I was really wondering what was behind this link.
- Fishysoup 7y agoFirst thing I'm getting when I can afford to replace a toilet.
- alephnan 7y agoYou can get a bidet.
- farnsworth 7y agoThere are very simple attachments on Amazon for less than $40 (maybe not currently, but mine was very cheap)
- golemiprague 7y agoI don't understand the price complains, yes Toto might be a bit expensive but there are countless of Chinese brands selling such sits for $300 with most common features. My only problem is that I don't have electricity in my toilet, otherwise I would have bought one long time ago.
- systemvoltage 7y agoI've spent significant time in Japan and everytime I return back to US, I never go "Gee...I wish we had one of them Japanese toilets". It's fine. Not great, but it does the job. Although I think bidets are great, we should get that going in the USA.
- pfundstein 7y agoTo counter your anecdote with my own, Japan is a common holiday destination for my circle of friends, and every single time anyone comes back, they either: go "Gee...I wish we had one of them Japanese toilet seats", or actually buy one, or they already have one and say nothing.
- giardini 7y agoHow well do these electric Japanese toilets work when there is no electric power? As in a hurricane or earthquake?
- alephnan 7y agoThere are non-electric bidets.
- gms 7y agoThey have a manual flush too.
- pfundstein 7y agoI would suggest, in such a scenario where electric power is absent, that the toilet seat would work much like a non-electric toilet seat.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- loeg 7y agoThey have 100% parity with "conventional" US toilets in a power outage. As long as there's still water pressure, they can flush.
- DonHopkins 7y agoJust like Mitch Hedberg's joke about escalators: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHopAo_Ohy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHopAo_Ohy0 >I like an escalator, man, because an escalator can never break. It can only become stairs. >There would never be an "Escalator Temporarily Out of Order" sign. Only "Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry For The Convenience."
- giardini 7y agoDonHopkins says >"There would never be an "Escalator Temporarily Out of Order" sign. Only "Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry For The Convenience."< I've encountered such a sign! Problem is that stopped escalators cause certain cognitive problems: some unconscious part of the brain anticipates that the escalator _will_ work and attempts to compensate appropriately as you put your foot onto the step. It is not uncommon for someone to stumble or even fall when they take their first step onto a stopped escalator. A similar sensation can occur as you're scrolling while browsing, when the page hits an upper/lower limit and ceases to scroll. The brain anticipates that the text will continue to scroll but it doesn't, and that causes an "upset" sensation, a dissonance, if you will, that actually hurts somewhat! It feels as if your eyes are crossing!
- okonomiyaki3000 7y agoAt least America is winning the going-down-the-toilet race.
- thirtyseven 7y agoI think a big obstacle to adoption here is that most US bathrooms don't have an electric outlet in the right place for a Washlet. Now the already expensive toilet needs electrical work too, which may not even be possible if you're a renter. If I ever own a place I'm definitely getting one though.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoYeah, I'm in the same position.
- remmargorp64 7y agoI rent an apartment, and I just ran a 25 foot white-colored extension cord around my bathroom wall along the top of the floorboard molding, with the cord tacked in place with coax cable clips. It then plugs into my GDFI outlet on the other side of the restroom. It looks tidy enough, and it gets the job done! It has a heated water tank, heated seat (although I never use it), a blow dryer, and a night light. I haven't needed to use a single square of toilet paper ever since I got my bidet. No regrets!
- 6t6t6t6 7y ago> heated seat (although I never use it) Really? After living for some years in Japan, I feel almost traumatized when I go to Europe in winter and I have to sit in a cold toilet.
- bryanlarsen 7y agoMany bathrooms will have a light switch nearby though. Replace it with one of these: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Leviton-15-Amp-125-Volt-Combo-Self-Test-Tamper-Resistant-GFCI-Outlet-and-Switch-White-R92-GFSW1-0KW/206000203 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Leviton-15-Amp-125-Volt-Combo-Se...
- dariusj18 7y agoThis is the reason I have only bought the bidet attachments. One day, I will run power to my toilet area and start with a bidet seat, then eventually I will get the full toilet.
- droithomme 7y agoThis has been posted several times. $17,300 toilets are great, much better than $80 toilets. Author should install a $17,300 toilet in his home using money he actually earned himself and THEN write about how he feels that was the right decision.
- nrp 7y agoBidets are nowhere near that expensive. Really nice, automated, integrated Totos are <$2,000. Replacement toilet seats to retrofit bidet and heating functionality are normally $200-300 (outside of pandemic times).
- HenryKissinger 7y agoHold on a second. This is only for one particular model. The article says that high-tech toilets are present in hotels, restaurants, bus stations, rest stops and around 80% of homes in Japan. Japan is a poorer country than the United States. If Japan can afford this technology, there is no reason the US can't, from a strict affordability standpoint.
- benrbray 7y agoPoorer by what metric? I wouldn't agree that life in Japan vs USA is so dissimilar that you can definitively say Japanese people/shop owners are poorer. For example, both countries rank highly on the Human Development Index [1]. In fact, Japan is #3 by inequality-adjusted HDI, whereas USA is #28. (agree that the user you're responding to is being disingenuous about the price of Japanese toilets btw. The other differences is that public restrooms in Japan are often shared among several nearby shops--like at a train station--meaning a Toto is always within reach even if there's not one in every shop.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequalit...
- p1necone 7y agoIf you're talking about GDP per capita it doesn't really tell you whether the general populace is well off or not.
- NoPicklez 7y agoComparing the innovations of the toilet to the rise of the iPhone. Well perhaps if the innovative electronic toilet was so good it would have, as the author says "diffused" into other countries.
- dropoutcoder 7y agoCleaning after defecation really requires the skillful application of wet paper towel, then dry paper towel, followed by a shower with a removable shower head set to the laser setting, with soap and disposable rag. Having spent time in Japan, I found that a Toto washlet is inferior to the shower method. However, washlets are clearly better than only dry paper towel. My process for American public restrooms involves wetting paper towels, preferably after defecating to maintain absorption of water in the clumped paper towels. It’s odd to me that bathroom stalls don’t offer the facility to wet paper towels. It must be obvious to all that dry paper towel (without soap nor water) cannot possibly clean fecal matter sufficiently, yet this seems to be the cultural norm. Perhaps someone will invent a kind of washlet that works better than the current offering. I personally don’t need heating and gizmos, just a high quality and reliable cleaning on par with the shower method.
- adrianN 7y agoMost people don't want to shower every time they poop. That would require rebuilding most office buildings with several times the bathroom space.
- Ghjklov 7y agoOkay imagine this. You finish taking a shit. And then there's a hole in the wall that you stick your ass in. Then your ass sealing the hole creates a vaccum where it can then flood the hole by violently shooting warm soapy water at your ass. It does this for 3 cycles with new recycled soapy water each time. Then it switches to the dryer mode and completely dries your behind.
- jcims 7y agoWhere’s the Kickstarter
- DonHopkins 7y agoWith a warning sticker that says: "DO NOT PUT REMAINING EYE OVER HOLE"
- downshun 7y ago
- downshun 7y agoFocus seems to be in waste removal instead of data collection. Would large scale stool analysis benefits outweigh the costs of its implementation? Maybe there can be another 'Ignaz Semmelweis' before another 'Broad Street cholera outbreak' type event.
- DeathArrow 7y agoDo those toilets come with an UPS in case there is a power loss? Also since they might have a microcontroller or CPU running some software, I hope they aren't connected to the Internet since that might expose the user to DOS attacks.
- loeg 7y agoI ordered and installed one of these Totos last year myself (US). Love it.
- DeathArrow 7y agoI think many US policy makers do not trust foreign technology. Would you imagine Mr Trump using a Huawei made toilet?
- waterhouse 7y agoA Dave Barry column from 22 years ago[1], describing how 3.5-gallon-per-flush toilets were banned in the US, makes me wonder if some kind of import restriction or regulation about what can be installed in certain places applies. Though there are people in this thread saying they've got one in the US, so that's a point against that theory. [1] https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1998-11-01-1998305189-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1998-11-01-19983051...
- bitwize 7y agoI frickin' love the Toto Washlet, but a toilet with only the flushing feature is less likely to break and easier to fix when it does so there's something to be said for its economy of design and lack of scope creep. I believe Toto sells the Washlet as a seat for an ordinary toilet, so that helps.
- Jenkins2000 7y agoI bought the Luxe Bidet Neo 180 on Amazon for $41 in 2017. Easy to install and no electricity needed. They are out of stock now, but if you can get one, they are amazing.