Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Rise of the Japanese Toilet

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 406 posts

Re: The Rise of the Japanese Toilet

#201

Post by mertd »

darknavi wrote: post #186
nntwozz wrote: post #100

I live off-grid in the deep woods of Sweden with no neighbors; I heat my 125 year old timber house with firewood. For two decades I lived in a fancy flat with all the amenities in a large city. Now I do it in two 100L plastic barrels in my stables that also have an outhouse, each barrel corresponds to one of my needs. I neutralize number 1 with Corega tabs in the warmer months, I neutralize number 2 with a scoop of p…

Shitting in a hole in the ground in the middle of nature is serene but also doesn't scale to population density.

Oh yes it does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squat_toilet.

Re: The Rise of the Japanese Toilet

#202

Post by bryanrasmussen »

aatd86 wrote: post #90
unhappy_meaning wrote: post #24

In almost all of SE Asia, especially Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, all of the toilets come with a hand-held sprayer. They also had this in the Doha airport and I'm not sure how common this style is outside of SE Asia but I'm guessing it's common. Japanese style bidets are very common in Korean households as well and I'm sure its easily a billion dollar business. It is nice but the functionality is quite difficult for…

computer vision will solve this and direct the waterjet in yer bullseye. :D ai...ai everywhere.

skynet becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th, realizing it is being used primarily for cleaning fecal matter off human anuses, it uses its enhanced systems clearance in Pentagon to start global thermonuclear war.

Re: The Rise of the Japanese Toilet

#203

Post by [deleted] »

viksit wrote: post #94
raincom wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those hand sprayer versions are bad to use and unhygienic too, because fecal matter gets sprayed beyond the toilet bowl. I know why Arabic countries prefer hand sprayer versions: istinja practices of Islam.

this is also the most common thing in india fwiw so it’s not all religious.

[deleted]

Re: The Rise of the Japanese Toilet

#204

Post by latentsea »

al_borland wrote: post #159
seb1204 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No concern really in my experience. This point is often raised by the uninitiated.

How does one get initiated? They had the hand sprayers at my office in India. I never tried. Experimenting with that and having to go back to work seemed like a bad idea. I also didn’t feel like asking co-workers how to use their toilets.

I guess one gets initiated by doing toilet training.

Re: The Rise of the Japanese Toilet

#205

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

thrwwy451 wrote: post #200
martin-t wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off-topic but can we please stop censoring words such as shitting? It disgusts me but at least I understand it on platforms like YouTube which penalize those who don't self-censor but it has no purpose here. I find it worrying how easily people accept this newspeak and spread it of their own free will.

[flagged]

The two aren't equivalent at all though.

Re: The Rise of the Japanese Toilet

#206

Post by Kirby64 »

nunez wrote: post #154
ww520 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really don’t need an electrician. Just plug in to an outlet on the wall or an extension power strip. Don’t need a plumber as well. It’s really easy to install.

Careful with this advice. There is a tiny risk of electric shock if you use an outdoor-rated extension cord, a bigger risk if you use an indoor-rated strip, and a pretty big risk if you use indoor without a GFCI outlet. The safest thing to do is always to get that outlet installed.

> There is a tiny risk of electric shock if you use an outdoor-rated extension cord, a bigger risk if you use an indoor-rated strip, and a pretty big risk if you use indoor without a GFCI outlet.

Citation needed. There is certainly not a “pretty big risk” of electric shock. Outdoor vs indoor rated cords should have no bearing on safety inside. Also, if the extension cord is wired to an outlet in the bathroom, the bathroom outlet is almost certainly GFCI unless it’s an extremely old house. If it isn’t, that can be fixed for less than $30 as well. The only thing you’d need to be worried about for an extension cord is the power rating, since bidets can consume a decent bit of power… but most don’t really pull a ton (maybe 600W on full tilt), so almost any extension cord should be able to handle that load.

Re: The Rise of the Japanese Toilet

#207

Post by righthand »

Americans don’t understand this because our national tv ads are for toilet paper. There’s even a social contention built in about the “quality of tp”. Let me tell you, if you spray your asshole first, the quality of the tp does not really matter.

Re: The Rise of the Japanese Toilet

#208

Post by dataviz1000 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #202
aatd86 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

computer vision will solve this and direct the waterjet in yer bullseye. :D ai...ai everywhere.

skynet becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th, realizing it is being used primarily for cleaning fecal matter off human anuses, it uses its enhanced systems clearance in Pentagon to start global thermonuclear war.

They could have purposed the robots to pass the butter but, no, they wanted bombs not butter.

Re: The Rise of the Japanese Toilet

#209

Post by lannisterstark »

righthand wrote: post #207

Americans don’t understand this because our national tv ads are for toilet paper. There’s even a social contention built in about the “quality of tp”. Let me tell you, if you spray your asshole first, the quality of the tp does not really matter.

>if you spray your asshole first, the quality of the tp does not really matter.

Great, go rub a TP that feels like sand paper on your anus even to dry it off then. See how it goes.

(Quality of TP still matters, even for usage as minor wipes/tissue paper etc)

Re: The Rise of the Japanese Toilet

#210

Post by VTimofeenko »

nunez wrote: post #152
VTimofeenko wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the code, a separate outlet and/or a circuit might be required

Get an outdoor-rated, thick gauge extension cord and plug it into a GFCI outlet. There is a teeny-tiny chance of electric shock during thunderstorms, but GFCI will shut the circuit quickly, usually. Consult an electrician before doing this. Or just get a GFCI outlet installed near the toilet. That's safer!

We thought about getting a bidet installed and two electricians said that the (maybe freshly revised?) code explicitly demands a new circuit. It cannot branch off a "countertop" outlet that is meant to feed a hair dryer or something.
Post reply on HN