Yes, I understand that the dynamics might be different for a family. In Spain normally you'd have 1 bathroom for each 1-2 rooms, so a house/appt with 3 rooms wo

Yes, I understand that the dynamics might be different for a family. In Spain normally you'd have 1 bathroom for each 1-2 rooms, so a house/appt with 3 rooms would normally have 2 bathrooms. I am talking mainly as a single person renting. And of course it's my opinion coming from a different culture. "While bathing, why should we see toilet" I prefer to see an ample room while doing anything, than to have a wall right in front of me. It's not about the contents of the room, but about having walls less than 1 feet on each side of my face (for the toilet). "Toilet smell" should not be a problem normally with decent ventilation, specially with the industrial fans that Japanese homes seem to have in the bathrooms. My issue is with overall distribution, where Japanese houses (at least for single person/room) seem to take 30~40% of the floorplan space in what in other countries would be a single room taking 15~20%.