The Rise of the Japanese Toilet
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It is nice but the functionality is quite difficult for a person who's not used to this whatsoever. After you're done sh*ing, you grab the handheld sprayer and turn it upside down and reach behind you toward your butt and try as best as you can to aim it into your anus to wash as best as you can. People who have been doing this their whole lives can probably aim with a precision of a Marine Corp Sniper but to us, we look at it as alien technology. It's is quite difficult to use for a first timer and there are factors that worry us.
If its not aimed correctly, where does the splash go? If you're lucky it stays in the toilet boil. However if your aim is off, you can completely miss your anus and either shoot to much under or over which will shoot the water outside of the toilet bowl.
Also when I was using the bathroom in the Doha airport, the handheld sprayer had a soap dispenser next to it. I was curious what it was for so I YouTube'd and searched for instructions on what the soap dispenser was for and (kind-of) to my surprise it was soap to lather and clean your anus with your other free hand. After you lather and clean, you basically rinse your hand with the hose as well.
so slowly squeeze the trigger to confirm the aim is correct, rather than going full blast at the start?
Another option is to adjust the water connection valve at the start of the host so its not fully open, but by the time you notice the valve, you're probably already familiar enough to aim straight.
The water pressure can also be startlingly strong, but you also get used to that.
I eventually got used to blasting myself clean, but I still prefer TP.
In my experience even least fancy American bathrooms are vastly more functional and cleaner by design than what I get in my trips to India in homes or even 4 star hotels.
I guess for some definition of difficult? Honestly it takes about 5 seconds to get used to and then you can never go back to using just toilet paper.
This seems like a great way to spray shit everywhere and is not at all how I learned to use those. What I do is soap one hand, aim the jet into the toilet past the anus with the other hand (jet vector orthogonal to the anus's normal vector), then go to town on it with soap and water. It's foolproof and you get very clean.
How has nobody mentioned this? I feel like I'm on crazy pills, is everyone seriously blasting a jet directly at their chocolate starfish?
We all gotta wash our butts, but it just seems more civilized to do it in the shower as you can get everything clean, you didn’t just crap, and you’re not eating with those same hands immediately afterwards.
Toilet paper + wet wipes are 100x more sanitary than what you describe
Adjust pressure to a 3-4 inch high fountain. No overspray.
Angle the flow forward, to minimize drip-back onto the sprayer head.
Why not from the front? It makes way more sense. Easier to aim and your butt seals against the back edge of bowl hole so the water doesn't splash out.
I bought these sprayers for my house when people lost their minds hoarding toilet paper during the initial COVID lockdowns in the US. It only took a few days to start getting it right the first time, every time.
When you're used to them it's very annoying to end up in a country that doesn't have them. Especially the US, which in addition has strange toilets that fill up with a lot of water during normal operation and bathroom stall privacy that begins 30cm above the ground.
Aim the sprayer down into the toilet, let the water go on your dominant hand (hold the washer without the dominant), so no water gets out, use the hand with soap to put soap/water on your anus, wash kinda like you would do when washing the body except you repeatedly rinse the hand in the water and bring more water to the anus.
Done
I used a Japanese style bidet and managed to ruin a painting, because the spray crossed through a door slightly open and into the wall on the other side, with a painting on it. A funny event actually
There seems to be two kinds of cultures in the world: those that use water / their hands for post-business cleansing, and those that use paper or some other medium.
* https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191004-the-peculiar-bat...
* https://www.sterillium.info/en/stories-hub/hygiene-customs-a...
For the hands folks, you then need to clean one's hands:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lota_(vessel)#Cleansing
* https://www.pocketbidet.com/blogs/our-blog/what-is-a-lota-a-...
* https://hellotushy.com/blogs/bidets/what-is-a-lota-muslim-hy...
ai...ai everywhere.
1 - wipe with tissue
2 - wash with water. Traditionally, use left hand.
3 - dry hand with tissue.
4 - flush
5 - wash hands at sink
In india you can just put your clothes on after powerwash because it so hot and dries fast. I am guessing you don't want that in chicago winter.
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.
It never ceases to amaze me people do that without any prompting. Why? What is gained? We are meat puppets who occasionally shit, piss, fuck, bleed, and die. Use a thesaurus if you must, but leave the asterisks out of it.
* Heated seat
* Bidet with warm water
* “Omakase” power-saving setting that learns your schedule and turns off the heat during the times you are typically out or asleep.
* Flush with a button press vs. turning a handle. This sounds minor, but whenever I have to use a toilet with a handle it is noticeably less convenient as you often have to keep the handle turned for a couple of seconds for a proper flush.
* The flush button is also conveniently located on the wall next to the toilet rather than behind the user (good for courtesy flushes). The control panel communicates with the toilet via IR.
* Selectable flush volumes (eco, normal, large)
* Automatically flushes when you stand up
* Non-stick coating to keep the bowl clean. It also releases a bit of water and wets the bowl when you sit down to make the surface less sticky.
* Has a lever to lift up the toilet seat a couple inches from the base to easily be able to clean under the area where the seat sits atop the base.
* Lid and seat hinges are dampened so they never slam shut
Some things which I don’t like/use:
* It has a blow drying function which I almost never use (toilet paper works fine for drying).
* It has an air filter that I need to change once a year at a cost of about ¥2000.
* Haven’t run into this problem yet, but could be a pain in an extended power outage. I think you’re supposed to just pour water into it from a bucket to flush it.
Features which I don’t have but would want on my next toilet:
* Button to automatically raise and lower the lid. Bonus points if it’s motion activated to raise the lid when you enter the bathroom.
I have this, and eventually disabled it. It's super annoying, and goes off if if I enter the bathroom and go near the toilet for any reason, even if I'm not about to use the toilet.
Except, the motorized seat is indeed convenient, for which the lid might be a dependency, and I guess at which point a scope creep into auto opening everything is just an inevitability.
When we first got it I always found it funny to ask other people if their toilet had a battery backup.
Importing that feature alone might help with higher divorce rates in the US.
I feel if it's already electric then everything that can be touch free should be and everything else should be crevice free.
A handle flush or chain flush also allows more control. I grew up doing slow flushes with minimal pressure at night for pee. It saved water and didn't disturb people.
Handles, on the other hand, also often have crevices and areas that are hard to reach for cleaning (on the underside of the handle or the area between the handle and the toilet). They also require more pressure, a larger contact area, and a longer contact duration, leading to more transfer of germs between the hand and the handle.
I agree that it makes sense for bathrooms to be as touchless as possible. My toilet will flush automatically when you stand up. Higher-end models will also raise and lower the lid automtically when you enter or leave the room.
It might be nice to have touch-free controls like you see on airplanes and some public restooms. But on the other hand there might be some design tradeoffs in terms of usability or battery life. And in a private residence, I don't think a flush button contributes significantly more to the spread of sickness than, say, door handles throughout the house.
In terms of water usage, Japanese toilets tend to be very efficient. The eco flush on my toilet uses 3.4L. The EPA's "WaterSense" certification, by comparison, applies to toilets that use 4.8L. So without more data, I'm a bit skeptical of the claim that it is possible to achieve better efficiency (and a complete flush) by using less pressure on the handle. To the contrary, I think it's probably more efficient to have the water enter the bowl with a higher velocity, as it would allow the water to get over the trap and flush with a lower total volume of water.
[1] https://toto.imagewave.pictures/GGA_14012506S154__web011.png...
Does it close the lid as well? Because if it doesn't this is a bad idea.
The amount of stuff that gets spread around your bathroom if you don't close the lid is disgusting.
Also, the science doesn't really back up the claim that closing the lid prior to flushing makes a meaningful difference [1]. Cleaning the bathroom and toilet regularly has a much larger impact than whether or not you close the lid before flushing.
[1] https://www.ajicjournal.org/article/S0196-6553(23)00820-9/fu...
Their bidets are surprising effective, and do not require any electricity or hot water, as the water volume needed to be effective is small, and the water has usually been sitting in the pipes in a home's walls at ambient temperature. 10/10, would spritz again.
I do dream of installing a legit Toto with the warmed seat and self cleaning, but didn’t want to deal with the hassle of buying the unit and then having to hire both a plumber and an electrician.
The only real problem is my son has grown up spoiled with a bidet at home, and now hates using the bathroom at school or out in public. I mean, I get it, but when nature calls, she ain’t askin’.
The safest thing to do is always to get that outlet installed.
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.
Btw one I bought recently already has a gfci.
Living in Asia where the "bumgun" (bidet on a hose) is popular made me realise how barbaric toilet paper is. It's really quite disgusting and also very uncomfortable!
In India it's relatively common to see these retrofitted bidets that fit under the seat. Personally I think they're inferior to the hose but that's a personal preference, these things still work great, and they are less intrusive and probably easier to install. One of my Indian colleagues has one at his home in Europe too.
Manual ones can also have... stupid water pressure depending on your plumbing... which some will find addicting.
But often it’s hard to install one in bathrooms that are not designed for it. So a Japanese toilet is a somewhat over the top solution in our house.
Well ... I don't have a bidet but doesn't mean I don't wash my buttocks after doing business. Unfortunately it's a bit of a taboo subject so it's not discussed, not taught in school / hygiene classes, just let it be.
Best example I heard from someone is this: imagine you dip your hands in Nutella. Then try to clean them just wiping with toilet paper, for more authenticity, without looking. Then look at the result, that's your ass, good thing you got underpants! Compare that with washing with soap and water!
So how do I do it?
- First step it to use wet toilet paper. I can't stand raw toilet paper, it scratches my hemorrhoids, so I pre-soak it in water from the tap if available or just water I keep in my mouth if in a public place / at work. I hate public places for this matter. This way it's much gentler for the tushy, it also pre-washes the area and third advantage, it's much less likely to clog the toilet when I flush, being already soaked.
- So after the first step I'm closer to washing Nutella than wiping it. If in a public place, that's the best I got. If at home, next step is wash my butt with soap and water in a plastic bucket. There, that's your bidet! For 2 bucks, you too can get one! :) Sure, you have to squat and not wear any pants, but you're in your own freaking bathroom. Dry with paper towels which you throw in a bucket. Plus, comes the third step anyway and you won't be wearing any clothes for that.
- Third step is taking a quick shower. At this point you won't be leaving a trail of poo into the shower drain or bath tub (I shower in the bath tub) but still get to clean your general areas that were in contact with the toilet, hence e-coli and sh*t (no pun intended), plus shower feels good.
So there's that: my overly complicated toilet routine that takes some 3 minutes extra after finishing with the toilet proper, which leaves me perfectly adequate for entering a pool. Unfortunately I also know that 99.98% of the population entering said pool has their Nutella butt washed for the first time in said pool, so no pools for me if I can avoid it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tJlfj6C0sA
Loose translation: When you get your hands dirty you wash them right? You wouldn't just wipe them right? Your butt is the same.
Sorry for intruding, but the water from some public place is the last thing I want in my or anyone else's mouth. May I suggest a water bottle or even a flask?
Or if you already tried that, can you explain why it didn't work for you? Just an idle curiosity. Thanks in advance.
I assume it's Italian/French style bidet (a separate item from the WC) and not the Japanese/SEA thing where it's a WC addition.
The fact we use the same term for three different kind of things is deeply confusing.
A GFCI outlet is needed if your breaker is not GFCI already, but this receptacle is something that isn't terribly expensive.
No outlet near the toilet.
Non-conforming/non-standard shape of seat and/or tank.
Things get interesting when the remote dies in the middle of the ordeal or the stop button could not be immediately located.
I'm not sure electricity is required for basic operation but at least most models are designed to be plugged in.
Nowadays many people use wet wipes. Probably less environmentally friendly, but they solve the same problem.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/28/spain-to...
Edit, to clarify: The wipes in question have been certified according to the EDANA Flushability Guidelines, which have been adopted into law in some countries, and there is also a related Spanish standard UNE 149002:2019 (“Acceptance criteria for disposable products via toilet”). The producer (Essity) claims that they dissolve similarly quickly to regular toiled paper.
It might very well be that the wipes still cause problems, but it’s not like these are plastic items that are flushed down the toilet in an unregulated way.
The news article was essentially a public service announcement to not flush those wet wipes unless you want a sewerage problem down the line.
So what do people do? They buy the cheap, non-dissolving ones and flush them anyway. Then when they inevitably clog, they call the plumber and insist they bought the correct ones when asked. So now there's widespread confusion about whether the dissolving ones work.
There is also that they’re kind of a contradiction in terms anyways, they’re wet … wipes. If they were dissolvable in water, the wetness of the wipes would cause dissolvement.
What many people are not even aware of is that even all high end toilet paper in the USA is a major headache for sewer systems because even that “paper” does not dissolve well at all, because they’re so focused on making the “paper” feel soft or be durable, it’s technically not even paper anymore and actually more like a cellulose felt.
I used to use wet wipes and flushed them, now I have a bidet and have only ever used wet wipes when traveling, where, ironically, Spain’s issues with basic things like flushing toilet paper, make disposing/not flushing wet wipes easy because many bathrooms have a lidded trash can next to the toilet/in the stall.
Ironically, their bigger issues produce a solution to a different, bigger problem.
Note: Yes, I’m aware it’s not everywhere in Spain or only Spain, but I am curious to hear where everywhere everyone has encountered having to put their toilet paper on a trash can instead of flushing.
Also used water sprays all my life
Maybe someday Americans will notice that they are the different ones.
For reference here is the model I have. I don’t remember the exact price, but I think it was a fairly mid-range model that cost less than ¥200,000 ($2,000) at the time.
https://search.toto.jp/tr/D08911R_201603.pdf
Edit: just had a look at current prices, and it looks like the MSRP for the same model is about 3x more expensive in the US than Japan. For example, the Neorest RS1 has a list price of ¥317,000 ($2,200) in Japan vs $6,315 in the US. So possibly a midrange model in Japan could be considered high end in the US.
I just pulled the data from a US model Neorest, and I see a bit over 600Wh in a day. So better than 40W, but not amazing. It does drop below 1W for short periods, so it’s not actually the electronics wasting power at idle.
https://www.homedepot.com/b/Bath-Bidets-Handheld-Bidets/N-5y...
These deliver 90% of the benefits for under 10% of the cost, and less maintenance. It’s like a small metal garden hose with gun shaped valve at the end, you attach between the wall spigot and hose to the toilet with an adjustable wrench. Takes maybe 10 mins.
Would never go back to the dirty butt lifestyle. ;-)
The water hose stacks inline with your existing supply at the point where it enters the toilet basin—a simple unscrew-and-rescrew operation on the order of attaching a garden hose. If the seat and water are heated (vigorously recommend!), the extension cord plugs into your existing shaver outlet / GFCI.
I’m familiar with Brondell as a non-Toto option, and I’m sure there are others!
Heated is not necessary in California and more complexity means more likely to break, so YMMV.
Please don't spread electrical code myths.
Should have said ‘normal’ power outlets not allowed to avoid this subthread however.
I've definitely seen homes here with outlets near the toilet as well, with no extra safety devices beyond GFCI.
(And a quick search suggests that building code requires an outlet within 3 feet of every wash basin.)
If you are not talking about California, then... bummer; that level of restriction seems entirely unnecessary for safety.
As mentioned in this thread I forgot the word ‘normal’ as in standard outlets are not allowed.
The only thing is that one will typically need to run an extension cord to reach the toilet, but typically apartment bathrooms are pretty small anyway so it's not a particularly long extension cord.
None of those things are permanent and can be done by a single person with minimal knowledge and some common hand tools.
Try from a store with a return policy I guess.
In the last place I rented, I bought and installed a Toto Washelet seat. When I moved out, I removed it and replaced the original seat. Same unit is now in a bathroom in the house I own.
The seat replacements aren't as integrated as the entire-bowl replacements, but they come pretty close.
Would never go back.
Seat warmers, auto open, night light and auto flush are features no one seems to talk about but these are as incredible as the washlet itself.
Update: "washiki" is the name
The term for bidet/Toto style toilets in Japan is washlet (ワッシュレット).
Otherwise, "Washiki toilet" is a term of art, and will not point to washlets. It will be the official designation in Japan as well.
I'm not convinced though maybe I was just never properly trained. When I use a squat toilet I have my pants bunched up, when I squat the bunched up pants are between my upper and lower legs and cut off the ciruculation in my legs. If I'm constipated it my legs are screaming much sooner than on a seat.
I guess it's like going to a place which doesn't use toilet paper?
Then I come back home and go out and about and am disappointed when even nice restaurants don't have them.
I asked and it seems to go back to the sarin gas attacks in the subway years ago.
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)
Hm, unsure why the hostility there. My quip wasn't nearly this hostile.
>I use 2-ply and 3 squares at most.
Yes, that's not bad quality TP lol, and not what I was talking about. You ever seen TP in universities/restrooms for supermarkets etc? That's what I am talking about. Further, you ignored the points about using toilet paper as tissue paper, which is what a lot of people in bathrooms also do.
Via a tool that I made to auto-redirect to archived links :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL#Syntax
Whatever the user is "throwing at you" if it doesn't have these things in the front, it is not a "URL". It is not even a "protocol-relative URL".
What's the point of that?
> I spent a whole day building a web scraper to bypass archive.today’s firewall
Meanwhile archive.* refuse to serve the totally human me who makes at most 1 legitimate request a day.
Do water jets like this not spread worms and other intestinal parasites? I’d be especially worried about hand held jets in public restrooms and hotel bathrooms.
Does anyone have any hard information on that?
- In Islam, Muslims must pray 5 times a day, but you must have 'Wudhu' which means you need to have performed the ritual wash before praying. You have to do it again if you've gone to the toilet. * When you go to the toilet, you must, as a requirement use water * So, most Muslim household bathrooms or public bathrooms in Muslim countries have a hand sprayer or at a minimum, a water container to fill.
I worked in Dubai and Saudi before, and apartments come with hand bidet sprayers.
Regarding Singapore, I wouldn't be surprised if this was influenced by Malaysia (a Muslim country, but they were part of the same country before) although when visited Malaysia I can't remember (ok they probably did) have a similar arrangement. I remember my Chinese friend telling me that her dad went to a Muslim school (a Malay school), so he pretty much uses water like Muslims do (when they go to the bathroom).
Regarding the deadly hand sprayers (pressure wise), usually in modern Mid East apartments: - They are connected to a tap so you can control the pressure - those bathrooms usually have toilet paper too, so you wet the paper to clean first, then you can direct the water on to your hand whilst you clean yourself with your left hand, finally dry with toilet paper. Final step of course, wash your hands! Hence why Muslims only eat or shake someone's right hand, knowing the left hand is on toilet duty.
I've been in corporate bathrooms in the UK, in a cubical, and you hear someone enter, pee (or even more) and exit without washing their hands!!! Not only once either.
The bottom line is, use water. No one can argue it's better to use paper. Some folks dislike of things from the Middle East lead them to argue toilet paper is enough. It isn't. (-_-)
Side note: If you're ever in Dubai and visit one of their big malls, like Dubai Mall, you'll question where the 1st and 3rd worlds are. Clean and maintained luxury rest rooms, you'll be happy to relive yourself in such restrooms, rather than dread using the toilet if you're outside. And they have good baby changing facilities too.
I would honestly prefer to be exposed to germs rather than go the whole day with poo wedged in my ass.
While searching for a house to rent (and buy), that is always one of the criteria (in Lisbon - center of Portugal - they are not that common anymore).
It just seems so weird and unclean not to be able to wash ourselves after using the bathroom. I guess it's a cultural thing.
Since then, whenever I search for a new apartment to rent, this became one of the criteria I look for! I simply can't go back to just dry wiping, ever.
> Since then, whenever I search for a new apartment to rent, this became one of the criteria I look for! I simply can't go back to just dry wiping, ever.
If the cord is not long enough you can step in the shower/bathtub (if you are abled ofc) to wash yourself.
https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=141&topicid=27...
In my country I think you can't easily plug into the water source.
On the Bristol stool chart, they look like type 4, which is supposed to be normal, but they make a terrible mess on the way out, and often don't exit completely. I can sit and push for however long I want, but eventually I have to pinch it off. And then I've got a huge mess that needs 10+ wipes.
Lots of people take it for granted. But in many places outside of East Asia. They are not given.
I'd recommend ignoring these infomercials.
I just don’t understand how people like to walk around with even a small amount of poop wedged in their crack, irritating the area and coming into contact with their underwear, pants, it’s absolutely disgusting.
I got “stuck” in Asia during COVID for 3 years, when I returned back to my home country (zero bidet society) I forgot all about the lack of bidets as it was just common place. When I went to cleanup I never forget the horror and I had a sinking feeling, as if I was ejected from civilization or something.
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 peat or sawdust.
I also wash myself (in number 1) after number 2 using soap and a 10L-bidon with a shower hose attachment that I carry with me like a briefcase from the house during the colder months.
The barrels are emptied regularly in a hole in the woods, in summer the dung beetles take care of everything. There's virtually no smell, actually less than in a modern bathroom with mechanical ventilation. It's always drafty in the outhouse and I usually leave the door open anyway.
I can wax poetic about sitting in the outhouse on a sunny day with the door open watching the blue sky and hearing the wind in the trees with the birds chirping vis-à-vis doing it a concrete box surrounded by high-tech plumbing and equipment, but ironically it just feels better not having any nastiness inside or anywhere near the house I sleep and eat in.
Just think about that for a second.
I've been to Japan and I actually prefer my way.
I think technical (smart?) toilets are nasty, nasty to clean and even nastier to repair if they break.
Less is more, if given the choice I'd much prefer a simple (dumb?) toilet with a shower hose next to it.
This is pretty common in most bathrooms in Sweden.
P.S.
Rimfree toilets are the shit.
I love my bidet and usually carry a travel bidet. For campervan camping I looked at composting toilets but this one problem has ruled them out for me so far.
Scaling is not something intuitive to end user. Hard to say "pretty sure it scales" when your usage is so low scale, secondary effects are invisible to you
- Plant watering containers.
- Condiment squeezers.
And in a pinch I've seen...
- Dish soap bottles...
I’m certain the Japanese couldn’t be the first to find ways to heat seats or provide different settings for washing.
I got one at a garage sale for $20. Hooked it up and tried it. Quite a marvel of features. Remote control (with config LCD menu on the back), heated seat, 2D aimable spray with separate male/female settings, warm water reservoir and what all. Every single feature worked, but:
It dripped water. I caught all that with a container and a towel while experimenting. Then removed it again and hunted for the drip, only to find that this is simply not built to western plumbing standards. The water inlet is just a friction-fit plug with an O-ring gasket, held in by a clip. Plastic on plastic. I replaced the O-ring with a new one, tried again... only for some other degraded o-ring inside to have been jarred loose in the process and water now leaking from somewhere inside.
Service manual? Spare parts? Nada. You can, however (from the US at least - I'm in Canada) ship this back to Toto and they'll recondition it to new for a reasonable flat rate fee. That's the only repair option.
After which it would probably not leak. But friction fit plastic-on-o-ring is fine for toilet environments that are tiled, "wet" areas with a floor drain. Mine, however, is upstairs straddling the kitchen/family room boundary in a house built out of sticks and drywall. Major leaks are simply no go. Would I leave something like this pressurized, hoping only that some friction fit o-ring-on-plastic interface is not going to start leaking unexpectedly? Nope. The same thing equally applies to the new ones, which are about $600 at Costco, or were at the time I looked.
So the "experimental" toilet moved on to another tinkerer friend who, maybe, will replace all the o-rings or have Toto fix it some day. I'm a gadgeteer, so I thought I could make a solenoid valve box to go in series with the thing's inlet, whereby you push a button and the wondertoilet gets water pressure for the next 5 minutes, after which it times out and turns off again. Just to remove the "come home to unexpected flood damage" factor.
Aside from that... "testing" of course under real world conditions. But... a nice warm water spray after the #2 business... shall we say does ... smell a bit. And didn't quite get things to the point where no toilet paper was needed afterward, nevermind the heated blow dry (which this thing also had). I'll stick to western toilets.
A word of warning for female users:
> Habitual use of bidet toilets aggravates vaginal microflora, either by depriving normal microflora or facilitating opportunistic infection of fecal bacteria and other microorganisms.
> Over washing the anus risks removing the sebum, which lubricates the surface. There have been reports of problems caused by over drying of peripheral areas
> This leaves the body vulnerable to dermatitis and possibly invasion of staphylococcus aureus bacteria.
From https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8553346/
> Outbreaks of resistant bacteria have been reported to be due to the contamination of the cleaning nozzles of bidet toilets in hospitals
I.e. the nozzles do get contaminated and if body isn't able to fend off the contamination bidet use can cause infection.
From https://www.journalofhospitalinfection.com/article/S0195-670...
> Of the 292 [hospital] toilet seats sampled, warm-water nozzles of 254 (86.9%) were found to be contaminated by one or more of the following organisms
I'm not convinced this is actual sanitation.
Edit: I should say, I know due to physical and diet circumstances taking a shit might leave you with more or less of a mess that could be uncomfortable or inconvenient - but I don't think unqualified praise for bidet use, suggesting bidets as a superior lifestyle choice, etc is good.
Drying was one of the features that I wished I hadn't paid extra for. It is a trickle of air and would take way too long to get you dry.
Why do we need something fancier for a toilet?
But, since jokes are best explained:
The opening assertion is one that mimics the toilet hygiene practices of many, but recasts it in a scenario that the reader is likely to find repugnant and evoke a reaction.
The second statement draws the reader’s attention back to the topic at hand, with that fresh strong feeling.
The reader may then make the connection that if “a few wipes with paper towel” is not good enough in scenario A, then the argument is that it is not enough in scenario B.
Others would downvote.
The main one is diet. Eat enough fiber so it's not a mess in the first place. This has many other benefits too. The next in priority is wet wipes. I strongly prefer them, and they are portable unlike a bidet. They are super useful while away from the toilet as well. After that there's technique. I am confident that the people who complain about paper and wet wipes are simply wiping way too hard causing chafing or even fissures. I don't want to get too graphic, but you also need to "relax" a bit down there for the most thorough job instead of just a surface level wipe. Normal paper first for removal of the "bulk material" and wet wipes for the residue.
That's it folks! If you do all this right, washing your hands afterwards shouldn't need so much effort either.
Bonus tip: why not just carry a little atomizer bottle filled with water so you can make your own wet wipes in a pinch? The spray is gentle enough to not completely saturate and ruin even the thinnest and cheapest toilet paper you find in the wild, and such a spray bottle is again very useful away from the toilet.
Ass tons of people still do it though,and without legislation to prevent marketing it as fine, it is mostly municipal sewage, and thus everyone overall, that will pay for the additional maintenance caused by the few.
It’s baffling to me, really. Also, it’s your anus, 99.9999% clean is also ok.