Tokyo - The Loos
The first thing I did when I set eyes on our first Japanese toilet, the one in our hotel, was turn off the heated seat. It's 28c out there! As it turned out, our perfectly adequate toilet-with-a-bidet in our hotel room was one of the most basic I saw.
Others had far more options displayed on the wall and several where I struggled to get the most basic of loo functions working - the flush! The automatic flush was sometimes out-of synch but we have those super hygienic toilets in the UK too. Most unnerving were the ones where the toilet lid lifted up by itself. I'm in the habit of always closing the lid before flushing and I remember using the facilities in Gorilla Coffee and the lid was up. I tried again only for it to lift up again before I realised I wasn't being forgetful!
As much as I love the separate bidet we see in Europe, it took me a few days to fully utilise the all-encompassing cleaning properties of the Japanese toilets.
At times I needed a map to find the type of toilet I wanted out of the 'traditional' (low down to crouch position) or 'western'. There was most often a little boy's urinal in the ladies bathrooms and nearly always a baby seat in the cubicle. I don't know how pushchairs would get on with the endless subway steps and rare lifts mind! Generally, babies are well catered for with unisex baby changing and nursing rooms everywhere.
