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Where did all the public bathrooms go?

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Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#431

Post by anon48293 »

cortesoft wrote: post #405
annzabelle wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan will lock people up for a long period of time if they show the sort of anti-social behavior that the most visible homeless people in North America are famous for.

The US “locks people up” at a much higher rate, and for longer, than Japan does. About 1% of the adult population is in jail in the United States, and it’s about 0.03% of the population in Japan. The US puts people in jail at 30x the rate Japan does. It is not because the US doesn’t lock people up enough.

Yes it is. It’s because they let them out again.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#432

Post by ivell »

ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #230
talon8635 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess if you don’t have a massive population of antisocial people who destroy the public facility, you can provide them. It’s a shame we in the west surrendered that. Not the worst thing in the world, but I do find it frustrating often to not have a bathroom available nearby (small bladder) But, while the toilets aren’t the worst sacrifice, the cumulative sacrifices made on the alter of our huge antisocial populati…

I assume you're talking about software engineers, because in every office I've worked in the toilets have been absolutely filthy by mid-morning. At my current place there are boot marks on top of the toilet seat that have been there for weeks, put there by one of the 10 people in the company. I think we can just apply the broken windows theory here. If whoever's responsible for the toilet doesn't demonstrate that the…

> At my current place there are boot marks on top of the toilet seat that have been there for weeks, put there by one of the 10 people in the company.

Are you complaining no one cleaned it up, including you? Or are you complaining that the company didn't get cleaning services?

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#433

Post by remarkEon »

justin66 wrote: post #257
talon8635 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess if you don’t have a massive population of antisocial people who destroy the public facility, you can provide them. It’s a shame we in the west surrendered that. Not the worst thing in the world, but I do find it frustrating often to not have a bathroom available nearby (small bladder) But, while the toilets aren’t the worst sacrifice, the cumulative sacrifices made on the alter of our huge antisocial populati…

> I guess if you don’t have a massive population of antisocial people who destroy the public facility, you can provide them. It’s a shame we in the west surrendered that. What a weird way of stating the problem. There is too large a population of homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicts wandering the streets. We didn't surrender anything, at least not during the last half century in the United States. We did as littl…

Anti-social people as a group is a larger population than just the homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicts, though these subsets are obviously a significant portion. The superset includes people who are genuinely anti-social in their nature, may be nominally employed, have a mailing address, and a place to sleep at night. These are the people we actually surrendered to when we changed enforcement priorities in major US cities to, ostensibly, have some grace and compassion toward the subset of homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicts. This is a demonstrably true statement. For me, and many like me, I know it's true because I can do something like "walk around in a neighborhood from my youth" or "visit a downtown corridor I used to frequent as a young adult" and simply observe the difference between the then and now. It's not always about the homeless, and the oft tiring debate around what to do about them. In many US cities, larceny is de facto legal as long as you are stealing goods valued under a certain amount. This is what people are talking about when they use the word "surrender".

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#434

Post by podocarp »

mstaoru wrote: post #94

This really hits home. As a person with IBS I basically cannot peacefully go outside in EU. I lived for many years in China and Thailand, and toilets are free, clean, and plentiful there, and you can easily ask any place to use their toilet - there's no stigma. I even had to run into a police station in rural China once. They were 100% chill about it, though they had to unlock a gate for me. Xi Jinping really will be…

Sorry I've been to China plenty and the toilets aren't clean. I mean it's better than nothing but some of them are nightmare fuel. But, the "privately" owned public toilets are decent, i.e. those in malls and hotels etc. Quite the same story for many Asian countries too.

I was also shocked by the cost incurred if you get out of home diarrhoea in Europe. Might as well buy adult diapers.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#435

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

giardini wrote: post #420
cortesoft wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States is certainly part of the west, and we incarcerate people at a higher rate than any other advanced nation, BY FAR. The idea that we are soft on crime is insane. Harsher punishments do not lead to lower crime.

[flagged]

Do you have evidence that harsher punishments have a causal effect on crime rates?

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#436

Post by podocarp »

joshuat wrote: post #419
UncleOxidant wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just not sure that stronger punishment and enforcement is going to be the answer here. It seems like many of the Asian cultures have a much higher level of social cohesion even without the threat of punishment. How do we get (back) to higher social cohesion in the West? I recall seeing a film of a shanty town somewhere in the US during the Great Depression. It was very neat and tidy. What happened between then an…

Stronger punishments? Probably not, but better enforcement? I believe so. It has repeatedly been shown that the severity of punishment does not sway crime nearly as much as the certainty of punishment does [1]. This all feels like a byproduct of the hyper-individualism we have in the West and the US, especially. [1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/670398

Indeed. Wasn't there a study where a policeman stationed on a street corner decreased crime or something even if he was just standing there doing nothing? Like a scarecrow effect.

Of course people will come out and scream Gestapo! And talk about their freedoms, but are the only two choices in life complete anarchy and a police state? Can't we live somewhere in the middle like a reasonable society? It's really just slippery slope fallacies all the time like either we don't police at all or do north korea style surveillance.

Also the demonization of police, the need is to have better police, not no police! It's just absurd what people come up with, it's so unreasonable yet these ideas gain such a large following.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#437

Post by remarkEon »

alex43578 wrote: post #271
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that once you draw "the line", then what? Warehouse a bunch of helpless people in overcrowded prisons? Bus them to some other less-draconian municipality? Forcibly drug them into quasi-submission and then turn them loose again until the depot injection wears off? Or perhaps we should "just kill 'em", as Fox & Friends cohost Brian Kilmeade once suggested?

If they are committing crimes, they should be imprisoned for an appropriate period of time as a deterrent to crime, a punishment for their actions, and to facilitate rehabilitation (even though evidence shows this doesn't really happen). If they are mentally ill and unable to care for themselves or pose a threat to the community because of their mental illness, they should be institutionalized and treated. If they ar…

The most important part of incarceration is removing what is a quantifiable risk to the public from the public square. Everything else is secondary. The point of a state having police powers is to ensure for the common good, it is not to continually indulge those who wish to damage that common good. To the extent that the state is responsible for e.g. punishment and rehabilitation, these are ancillary responsibilities that are (or were) downstream from removing threats to the common good from the public square.

Seems like, after all of these police and prosecutorial "reforms", we are back to deriving why many state powers exist from first principles. Fun to watch in real time.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#438

Post by freetime2 »

nobinsjapan wrote: post #378
freetime2 wrote: post #149

Public toilets are one thing that I really appreciate about living in Japan. It seems like you're never too far away from a toilet - whether it be in a neighborhood park, a roadside parking area, train station, convenience store, etc. And they tend to be pretty clean (at least as far as public restooms go), not something that I dread using like I do many public restrooms in the US. Japan seems to be just about a best…

But then japan has the opposite problem with trash bins. There was a stretch of road around 600m long, where there were at least 100 vending machine and exactly ZERO trash containers. And no, people did not keep after themselves, I saw plenty of discarded cans on the floor, just slightly outside of vision. Tokyo, 2025.

Generally the norm is to have a recycling bin for cans and plastic bottles right next to every vending machine (or group of machines). At least that’s the case 99% of the time when I buy a drink at a vending machine. And vendors that sell food/drinks will typically allow you to dispose of any remaining trash when you are finished.

In heavily touristed areas, though, it’s become a topic of much outrage on social media where people are illegally dumping garbage in recycling bins. A lot of times foreigners are blamed - and to be fair there are lots of videos out there of foreigners disposing of trash incorrectly - but of course it’s not just foreigners who are responsible. And this illegal dumping seems to have led to some vendors not putting out recycling bins in heavily touristed areas.

A new law was passed in December 2025, in response to increasing amounts of litter in some areas of Tokyo, which requires vendors who sell food to install trash cans. It also imposed new fines for littering [1]. So possibly the area where you experienced this issue has already seen some improvement in the past year. However, the linked article also says that vending machine operators in those areas were already required by law to put out recycling bins.

I’ve also noticed that a lot of people will just leave a can on the ground next to the vending machine if no bin is provided (or if the bin is full). The expectation is generally that if you sell some food or drink item, you also should accept the trash after it’s consumed, even if it's not legally required. So it seems like vendors are “punished” with a pile of trash for breaking that social contract, or people just otherwise feel entitled.

On a similar note, if you ever buy food from a food truck or stall, the vendor will usually happily dispose of any trash when you’re finished - even if they don’t explicitly put a trash can out.

In my opinion though public trash cans and public toilets aren’t really equivalent. It may be inconvenient, but you can always just hold onto trash until you reach a suitable place to dispose of it. But when it comes to using the toilet - and especially for children or people with certain disabilities - there’s a limit to how long you can hold it in.

[1] https://soranews24.com/2025/12/11/tokyo-considering-law-requ...

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#439

Post by ajmurmann »

anon48293 wrote: post #427
ajmurmann wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you suggest the solution is?

[flagged]

So anyone who has LSD on them gets life in prison? Sounds expensive. Is that how other countries have avoided having this many visible homeless?

Any concerns about police placing drugs on someone if punishment is this harsh?

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#440

Post by lefra »

Lots of comments here blaming the bad state of toilets on homeless people doing drugs.

They're not the only issue.

In France, toilets on highways are often disgusting. French highways have stupid-high tolls, so these toilets are used by people who have access to a car, and can spare a few tens of € to get to their destination faster. Not your typical drug-using homeless person. I'd say it's more that some people don't care to clean after themselves, and once the toilet is dirty, no one will touch it if they add up to the mess.

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