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Kikuchi urged people to maintain hand hygiene and to treat any open wounds. He said patients may carry GAS in their intestines, which could contaminate hands th
by bamboozled 2y ago
Kikuchi urged people to maintain hand hygiene and to treat any open wounds. He said patients may carry GAS in their intestines, which could contaminate hands through faeces.
Not really surprised, in Japan I often find toilets have a single tap with cold water and no soap. It’s quite disgusting. Lots of train stations are like this.
- abejfehr 2y agoThat is true, but I still can't reconcile how faeces get on their hands in the first place when it's overwhelmingly common to use bidets
- doctorwho42 2y agoYou should look up the aerosolization of patterns of toilet contents when toilets are flushed.
- bamboozled 2y agoFunnily enough a lot of Bidet toilets in Japan have a suction function for this reason.
- dclowd9901 2y ago… I have to think there’s also probably some manner of aerisolization when you spray with water too. I’m actually really confused by why people like bidets so much. Maybe I just don’t get how they work? On paper, it just seems more prone to the aforementioned issue and also getting the rest of your groinal region as dirty as your anus.
- hn_version_0023 2y agoAs a fairly hirsute gentleman, a bidet has been life changing for me. I am so much cleaner— the only way to be even cleaner would be to get in the shower! Now maybe that is all in my head? But honestly if you’ve ever tried to clean, say, peanut butter out of a shag carpet using only dry paper… well you have some ideas of what my struggle has been. With apologies for the graphic image; hopefully it elicits a chuckle from someone :)
- acjohnson55 2y agoThis is gotta be one of the funniest HN comments I've seen in my decade+ here. I'll happily accept my downvotes for this meta commentary.
- ethbr1 2y agoAs the book quips, "Everyone Poops"
- ralferoo 2y agoI've posted below about squat toilets, but you might want to try them if they are an option. Honestly, I'd glad I practiced a bit and learned to balance in a squat than have to sit on the (usually filthy) seats in most public toilets. But one of the most interesting things is that when you squat, your posterior is in a much more suitable position for the activity and there's a lot less cleanup required. Not always, but fairly often, the first wipe already results in such a clean tissue that you don't even need to bother with a second wipe. YMMV of course, and it also depends what you've been eating!
- meristohm 2y agoSome of the best, minimal-cleanup shits I've had were in Japan on a squat toilet. Also in the woods, over a cat hole; the ergonomics of squatting to poop work in our favor.
- bhy 2y agoIs it true that some people are genetically unable to squat?
- thfuran 2y agoI imagine anyone born without legs would find it difficult, but that's generally a pre-birth injury rather than a genetic condition.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
- PeterisP 2y agoIf you had shit on your hands, would you consider them clean after wiping them with a paper towel a few times, or would you want to wash them with water? The same applies for your butt.
- meristohm 2y agoDifferent regions of the body, and different uses. Around the anus there's bacteria in a nice warm moist environment to go to town. I don't open doors with my asshole, so I'm happy with enough wipes to get any excess poop off, followed by a spray from a cheap cold-water bidet (or diaper sprayer, left over from when our child was in cloth diapers), followed by a wipe for drying.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- LtWorf 2y agoHave you ever washed dishes? After the process are they cleaner or dirtier?
- thfuran 2y agoIf you wash dishes by directly spraying them with the faucet, the dishes will get cleaner and food debris will get splattered around the sink.
- wincy 2y agoI mean, normally I wouldn’t share, but you asked… my wife and I had terrible hemorrhoids to the point I was considering going to the doctor from using toilet paper. I bought a bidet and I’ve never had issues again. I’m happy to say my anus is the least inflamed it’s been in my life, and the hemorrhoids have completely gone away for us both.
- Ar-Curunir 2y agoIf you shit on any other part of your body, would you be content with merely wiping it with some paper?
- bamboozled 2y agoMany people still use the traditional Japanese toilet or western with no bidet. There is often options. Plus not everyone likes to use a public bidet.
- ralferoo 2y agoI honestly much prefer the traditional Asian toilets compared to the western ones with seats when I'm using public facilities. Usually the door doesn't go all the way to the bottom so you can open and close it with your shoe, you can use a pre-prepared piece of tissue to lock the toilet door, go about your business clean up and use another small piece of toilet paper to unlock the door and your shoe to open it, and do all that without physically touching anything apart from your own body or your own clothes. Usually the flush is on a handle that just needs to be pressed and conveniently at foot height too. Unless it's an automatic tap, I'll usually operate the washbasin tap with tissue paper between me and the tap too. Of course most Westerners have difficulty with the squat itself at first, but it doesn't take too long until you learn to balance properly. While I'd also suggest practicing the squat in the safety of your home first if you think this is going to be a skill you might need, in some ways it's easier to succeed in a public toilet when you're really strongly motivated against falling over! D:
- ta1243 2y agoGiven that you're washing your hands after I'm not sure the benefit The bigger problem is then opening the door to leave the room after washing hands
- ralferoo 2y agoYeah, I use a tissue barrier for that too. When I'm in Asia I usually carry around those little packs that have 10 folded tissues per pack. I normally tear one into quarters before I leave the street and go into the toilet, and use one quarter to deal with the lock shutting the door, one to open the toilet door (and after opening the door, operate the flush if hand operated), one to turn the tap off and one to open any doors on the way out. I also avoid the hand dryers, if present, as I think they just spread germs around. Hands usually dry pretty quickly anyway.
- coldtea 2y agoWith bidets it's ever easier to get feaces in your hands than it's when using just toiler paper
- TowerTall 2y agoWhen I was i Japan the toilet in my hotel room had a remote control with 18 buttons.
- treflop 2y agoHonestly you had a luxury bidet. Lots of Japan may have a bidet but most I’ve come across are in much worse shape.
- ryan_lane 2y agoAre you making things up? The norm, if there's a bidet, is for it to be button controlled. Even a lot of public toilets have button controlled bidets at this point. Some really old public parks will have squatters, and in the past these bathrooms would also not have had toilet paper (because the assumption is that you'd bring your own tissue paper with you - this is one of the reasons they hand out tissue papers with advertising). But nowadays basically all toilets have paper, and most have nice new bidets.
- coldtea 2y ago>Are you making things up? Are you rude? >The norm, if there's a bidet, is for it to be button controlled. Even a lot of public toilets have button controlled bidets at this point Did they say otherwise? Grandparent said "When I was i Japan the toilet in my hotel room had a remote control with 18 buttons." And parent wrote: "Lots of Japan may have a bidet but most I’ve come across are in much worse shape." Not that they don't have buttons.
- ryan_lane 2y ago> Are you rude? Are you? > And parent wrote: "Lots of Japan may have a bidet but most I’ve come across are in much worse shape." > > Not that they don't have buttons. They implied toilets with button controlled bidets are "luxury" toilets, and that most toilets they came across were in bad shape. I'm saying that the norm in a lot of Japan now, for public toilets, is what they called out as being "luxury" toilets. Their experience is so outside of the norm that it's either extremely outdated, or exaggerated to make a point (and the point is related to how things are unsanitary, so it has a tinge of painting Japan as a whole as being unsanitary).
- Mountain_Skies 2y agoThe washlet I have has a dryer function but it doesn't work all that well. I'm told this is pretty common and most people still need to use some paper to dry themselves. There's far less risk of fecal contamination of your hands while drying yourself after having your backside washed but it's still a possibility that when multiplied over an entire population means there are many people walking around with contaminated hands, especially if hand washing isn't the cultural standard.
- euniceee3 2y agoI have found that using toilet paper to remove the initial debris, then using the bidet, then drying with a new piece of toilet paper is the only way to consistently feel more clean.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- derbOac 2y agoI'd think Japan of all places would have voluminous quantities of antibacterial soap in public restrooms?
- cpach 2y agoAFAIK regular soap, used correctly, is enough in most cases.
- namaria 2y agoUsing antibacterial soap might be a systemic problem because it disrupts the bacterial ecosystem in our skin.
- ethbr1 2y agoMy experience with Japan was that it was simultaneously more and less advanced than you expect. There's a lot of juxtapositioning of {future}{past}, oftentimes within inches of each other.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoThis was a while ago but I found India to be the absolute worst for this. I was working in a modern office in Bangalore at the time, and the building's other tenants were companies like Microsoft and some other well-known big tech companies I'm forgetting at the moment, and not a single bathroom had any soap. I was totally grossed out.
- richrichie 2y agoIndia is probably the worst in the world when it comes to toilet hygiene. The whole country needs potty training.
- kanbara 2y agoi wouldn't call it "quite disgusting" considering how there are not more transmission of illness than other nations even in the densest parts of the country. people wear masks when they are ill and restrooms in food establishments typically have soap. air dryers like dyson in western countries are breeding grounds for germs and pathogens anyway
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoDo we really need to argue or split hairs that not having soap in a restroom is disgusting? Nobody is saying anything about masks or the pros/cons of air dryers. But not washing your hands after using the bathroom is disgusting.