A Celebration of Japanese Toilets

In this brief email, sent to a colleague in 2013, I spontaneously explore the high-end Japanese toilet experience. Later on that trip to Japan, I visited their Museum of Toilets in Shin Juku. Toilets are Shadow machines. We all tacitly agree it’s best not to acknowledge that even the most beautiful woman or the most dashing man each have to take a shit almost every day.

As the only two of my colleagues who have either studied the Japanese language (David) or have lived in Japan (Joe), I have taken the liberty of sharing with you both my peak experience in Tokyo (I've only been here with Petra and my son for a few days and Disneyland Tokyo awaits but I'm still certain that nothing will overshadow the experience described below).  I love Japan. The Japanese are superior to the East Indians, the Americans, the Chinese, and even the non-existent angels in make-believe heaven. I'm ashamed not to be Japanese. What follows is a description of my transformation. Arigato (while simultaneously bowing).  

After a 10 hour flight from LA to Tokyo, crammed into an inappropriately small coach seat, surrounded by various Japanese people wearing surgical masks, vaguely aware of my 6 year-old son climbing on me and playing with my ears as I endured the journey in a Xanax-induced stupor, wishing I was a wealthy man who could purchase 1st class seats, I arrived finally to our (rather fancy...thank you Visa card!)  hotel. My body ached and I collapsed into bed like a corn-fed cow shot point blank in the face by a sadistic farmer.

A few hours later, I was awakened from a banal recurring nightmare (one in which I was yet again unprepared for my "final exam" and dreaded having to "repeat a year" in high school) by the unmistakable urge to shit. 

Now, everyone knows that there are as many varietals of shits as there are of wines: the post-Thanksgiving mega-shit, the quick morning post-coffee dump, the sick man's squirting diarrhea, the bone dry Sunday morning hangover shit...but nothing is quite as unwelcome as the post-international flight had-to-hold-it-in-and-now-my-bowels-are-ready-in-the-middle-of-the-night  turd. 

So there I was: in bed, awakened from my senseless dream, and being ordered by my bowels to get up and release the remnants of the "Special Vegetarian Meal" served to me by a dismissive flight attendant hours earlier...some version of a chow-mein with a side salad that was hostile in its stark lack of texture or complexity (limp lettuce and one quarter-sliced small tomato). 

I walked to the dark bathroom and....alas...I quiver as I recall the experience...I sat on my first Japanese wonder toilet. 

I love the Japanese now and will harbor this love forever. 

My butt cheeks were met with an electronically warmed seat. By some magic technology, low-volume classical music began to play from a speaker behind me....I defecated with a few middle-aged grunts and then my asshole was given a set of gifts that enlightened me, that filled my soul with wonder at the genius of the Japanese collective mind....

Some technical but invisible device located my anus such that a soothing and precise stream of warm water shot right up into it...bull's eye...and washed away all remnants or debris.  After several exhilarating seconds (it seemed, by the way, that the classical music volume had risen gradually, a sort of ass-washing crescendo), the laser-accurate current of vertical anus cleansing water stopped and my mysteriously beautiful automatic toilet then shot out a measured parabola of even warmer water that soaked my ass crack horizontally. Was I dreaming?  No, indeed, I was not. This was then followed by several soft bursts of hot air essentially blowdrying my pampered asshole.  Reflexively, being the crude Western dry butt-wiper that I am, I reached for some toilet paper but my first and only simple toilet-paper wipe came through as clean as a laundered towel. 

I walked back to my bed and I swear that my anus felt warm and, well, nurtured.  I have never had a better shit experience. 

As a new devotee to Japanese toilets, I plan to make the pilgrimage to the Toto Showroom in Shinjuku to view (and experience?) the newest advances in toilet technology.

Thank you for allowing me to share my transformational experience.  Having others bear witness to my defecatory awakening honors both the toilet itself and the Japanese as a people.   S