Monday, June 15, 2009

Cleaning Up

I'm extremely sick and very busy, not a good combination, so nothing good blogging-wise is going to be coming from me for a while. Instead, I leave you with a funny story about Japanese toilets.

One of my cats is mildly retarded. He likes little noises.

The controls on the toilet in our Japanese apartment were these little bubble pressure switches that beeped when you pressed them. The cat used to get up on the control arm and walk around so he could hear the beeping sounds. Unfortunately, those buttons controlled the seat temperature, bidet action ("gentle spray" to "blow your ass into the next apartment") and water temperature of the bidet ("cold, wet Willy" to "disinfecting a rendering plant").

So, when you sat down in a stupor early in the morning or after a late night, you might get a little surprise ranging from an overheated seat to a steam cleaning of Uranus. You could count yourself lucky if the seat was hot, because that reminded you of the cat's shennanigans. Otherwise, your impaired brain had to catch the faint whir of the bidet head extending from its recessed niche before it pulled its Stanley Steamer impression on your ass.

The toilet in this video is very similar to what we had, but our control arm was higher, like an armrest on a chair, and had more buttons. The bidet action, however, is pretty spot-on.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Japanese have already demonstrated almost super-human ability to pack gazillion options into their toilet apparata, including set of musical tracks -it should be relatively easy for them to include couple of options for discouraging pets.
Although judging by futility of efforts and means to keep the cats from pissing on delicate plants in the garden, it might prove useless, too.

Mr. Bingley said...

seat temperature?

John the Scientist said...

Mr. B. - yes, the seat had a thermoelectric heater in it.

Eric said...

For some reason, the label on the inside of the toilet seat (in the video) reminds me of the scene in 2001 where Heywood Floyd, en route to the moon, studies the instructions on the door to the zero-gee toilet.

As for keeping kittens off the toilet controls: Japanese art and animation has left me with the sense that Japanese cats are very polite, reserved and patient, which means there would be no need to keep them off the toilet. Are you telling me that these things have taken some kind of... of... I don't know, artistic license? Can't be! Must be that your kitten, John, was overly Americanized, which makes sense--I'm sure the first thing I'd do with a Japanese toilet is start playing with the controls. :-D

John the Scientist said...

Japanese kittens, like the Harajuku girls (at least until they graduate), are allowed to run wild, partly because the rest of Japanese life is so regimented that they need some safety valves.

But my cats were American born and bred. Born to be wiiiiild! :D

Jim Wright said...

I've been in airplane cockpits with fewer controls.

But you've got to admit that the Japanese Hi-Tech Shitter is an order of magnitude above the usual squat hole you used to find so often in Japanese toilets - and still do throughout much of Asia, and France.

Eric said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Eric said...

I've been in airplane cockpits with fewer controls.

You mean like this one!

You can tell it's a real cockpit interior from the authentic wall clock and clipboard!

Jim Wright said...

Eric, your avatar looks nothing like you. Just sayin.

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