I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you about our latest expensive home purchase – our Toto fully automatic Japanese toilet.
It was installed while we were away on our UK/Norway odyssey. We generously told our daughter and her husband who were house/dogsitting that they could use it, but they declined. The fact that the lid lifts up when you come near it was too much for our son in law, who has clearly watched too many Japanese horror movies in his time (and honestly, who isn’t scarred by Ringu AKA The Ring?)
I must say, the first time I was in Japan, I also was very wary of these contraptions. Luckily you can treat them like an acoustic version, and they will do the same job as their less accomplished brethren, barring the heated seat. Even that takes some getting used to, as it is disturbingly reminiscent of following on too quickly when someone ahead of you has had a nice long sit down.
However, on our last trip, I went the whole hog, no holds barred, and I’m never looking back. It’s got all the advantages of a bidet, with none of the downsides, including the awkward seat swapping in the middle. Plus, I’ve never figured out the right way to sit on a bidet, and now I never have to.
Here is a close up of the remote control, which should be affixed to the wall, but isn’t so far.
The process goes like this. You walk into the bathroom, and the toilet lifts its lid in welcome. You sit and proceed as usual. When you’ve finished, it’s clean up time. You have to stop yourself from reflexively reaching for the toilet paper, because the Toto is going to do it for you, and better. If you’re a female, and all you’ve done is pee, then you press the middle button at the front, with a picture of a lady with stylish hair sitting on a little fountain. Well, it does what it says on the tin. It’s warm and gentle, but presumably you can program it to be as forceful as you like. I’m not sure if the temperature can also be adjusted, but I’ve been happy with it so far.
If you’ve hit the jackpot and had some bowel action, then you press the button just to the left. It looks like a cartoon snout but it’s a bottom.
I must confess, there are other things going on in the picture on that button but I haven’t figured out what they represent as yet. Anyway, the result is a highly accurately targeted and rather forceful jet of water aimed right at your anus. It is quite refreshing, but I must warn you of something from personal experience. Do not fart at the same time as being cleansed in this way. The sensation is rather alarming. I’ll say no more except that if we get invaded by aliens, I’m now mentally ready for the ensuing probing.
Once the water has done its thing, it’s time to get dried off. No, not with toilet paper, or even worse, that nasty cloth that the Europeans provide on their bidets: it’s from the warm gust of air aimed at your backside courtesy of button number four. Presumably if you were patient enough you could sit there until you were dry enough to stand up and pull your knickers up. I’ve never waited that long, though, and have always finished off with toilet paper.
The last step is flushing. For the first few weeks, this just happened automatically when I walked away to wash my hands, but more recently this no longer happens. I suspect Simon has been fiddling with the remote and changed the programming, although he denies it. The manual buttons are on the top of the remote.
Maybe it’s my astrophysics background, but the pictures look like variants of spiral galaxies to my eyes. It’s not that I think pressing a button here on earth is going to affect a galaxy, but knowing that there are as many galaxies in the visible universe as grains of sands on all our planet’s beaches, and that the flap of a butterfly’s wings can cause a hurricane in the Amazon (wasn’t that the crux of chaos theory? I forget.) Well, it gives me pause to reflect. Fortunately, Simon would be unimpressed I’m sure if I tried to explain any nonflushed turd by talking about existential dilemmas, so I have continued to flush. I’m guessing the three armed spiral galaxy is for number twos, and the two armed one is for number ones.
There are some other buttons that I haven’t yet figured out. Not sure why you’d want the blades of a fan anywhere near your delicate bits, so I haven’t pressed that one. Similarly, the magic wand is tempting but has too much capacity to go badly wrong, so that function also remains unexplored.
Anyway, as you can see, I’m enjoying our new toy immensely, and have no regrets, even though the installation was far more complicated and pricey than originally envisioned by the builder. Feel free to come over anytime and give it a whirl.