361–370 of 380 posts
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I know people eat with their hands in south/central Asia (including Burma), as well as in Muslim areas (Malaysia/Indonesia), I just never saw that in Tai areas of SE Asia. Well, you learn something everyday I guess.
We usually eat using our right hand when it involves rice. Otherwise we use spoon & fork.
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Regarding the sprayer, the question is not necessarily what happens to it when it's not spraying water... when the nozzle is in the process of spraying you, it's unavoidable that some of the contaminated splatter goes back into the nozzle. Anyone who uses that toilet will inevitably share the germ cultures from one another's feces. That doesn't strike me as very sanitary.
Unless you can poop at a higher pressure than the stream of water exiting the nozzle, the poop isn't going to work back in there.
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I've never personally used a Japanese toilet, so I'm genuinely interested: if you say your feet are to either side of the bowl, where do your lowered pants end up? Won't they be in the way?
I've been using them for a year in Japan, so there: You don't sit squarely on them (I don't know where you got the notion that your feet are on either side of the bowl), your feet are in front of the bowl, with the lowered pants in between. The pants are obviously below the opening of the bowl, so they don't get in the way.
From the parent.
You stand with one foot on either side of the bowl and squat
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Unless you can poop at a higher pressure than the stream of water exiting the nozzle, the poop isn't going to work back in there.
You ever spray a hose away from you and get hit with the splatter? Imagine spraying the hose up to clean the underside of a gutter. Can you imagine getting hit with splatter? Can you imagine the hose getting hit with splatter? Can you imagine the rim of the nozzle getting hit with splatter?
This is no different to the splashback that can occur when poop hits the bowl water (water that's been touching the splattered sides of the bowl).
It's no grosser than a regular toilet, and your butt will be cleaner.
Every one of these articles gets the pitch of these toilets completely wrong - for every person, and in every scenario, these are not universally better. Consider the following experiment: Smear some mud on your arm. Now, using a jet stream the power of a squirt gun and very low precision, wash it all off in 10 seconds. Not so easy. Then - imagine if you put mud on a place with hair! Not only will it not be clean wit…
I read a version of this argument in some US newspaper a while back. It completely misses the point. These ass-jet toilets are not intended to replace toilet paper. They are for getting your asshole (and ladyparts, but I can't testify on that topic) much cleaner in much less time than with conventional American toilets and dry paper alone. You use the ass-jet, then paper. That's how they work. (For a heinous bowel-mo…
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A single GFCI outlet on a circuit protects all outlets on that circuit: it will interrupt the circuit on a ground fault at any outlet wired in parallel. It is customary if not universal for the GFCI outlet to be closest to either the entrance to the room or the sink (often both). In such a case the fact that the outlet nearest the toilet doesn't appear to be a special GFCI receptacle isn't actually a problem.
Correction: a single GFCI outlet on a circuit protects all outlets on the load side of the GFCI outlet . A GFCI cannot sense a ground fault on the line side. If you want to protect an entire circuit with one GFCI outlet, it must be the first on the circuit.
However, it does confirm that the normal outlet by the toilet, protected as it is by the single GFCI outlet in the restroom (assuming the electrician wasn't as foolish as I was above) doesn't need to be replaced by a new GFCI outlet in order to plug in a fancy toilet seat.
Americans, by and large, are quite bizarre when it comes to discussing anything that takes place below the belt. When I mentioned working at Google, I have had multiple people say to me, "I heard the founders at Google are OBSESSED with toilets and import special models from Japan." As if one has to be stark raving mad to use a modern toilet from Japan, instead of the old fashioned toilet which was probably imported…
While I agree that Americans are especially prude, its not like these toilets are noticeable more common in Europe. Of course the French have their bidet...
It's purpose is similar to that of the Japanese toilet, though way more primitive - the Japanese solution takes less space and is more advanced generally, but way more expensive.
And once we get passsed the bidet stage then we can go on to the urine diverting toilet. Check out the latest toilet design competition run by the Gates foundation...
I respect Bill Gates for working on those projects - it would be easier just to manage traditionally all that money.
What I really miss from Japan are the toilets with a sink on top of the water container on the back (something like this: http://f00.inventorspot.com/images/profile-toilet.jpg ). You flush the toilet and the water refilling the container comes out of a faucet for you to wash your hands real quick and the water going down the drain fills the container up for the next flush. It seems so simple and helps save a tiny bit…
The odd thing is, in Turkey we universally have a nozzle on the back of the toilet that just is a stream of water that falls in an arc forwards. You control it from a tap on the side, on the wall. You turn on the stream and then angle yourself onto it, or wet your toilet paper a bit when wiping. Way less toilet paper (just to wipe&dry at the end), cleans way faster, your bum is not itchy, and it costs nothing. The to…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidet_shower