Comments on: Episode 35: What Japanese toilets taught me about the auto industry.

By: admin

admin — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:17:44 +0000

Thanks for the comment Brian. I should have had more of a caveat that I was clearly looking at this from a tourist perspective, staying in decent hotels and never setting foot in anyone’s home, nor outside the main touristy areas. And would you believe that I just saw an iPhone app that helps you locate the best toilets in a city?

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:39:15 +0000

I mostly agree with your rant, though I have to say that most Japanese toilets are not the high-tech kind. But they are available and fairly mainstream, which is more than I can say here.

I once tricked my fiance into walking about 3 miles across town “to the nearest train” in Tokyo, just so I could use the bathroom at a specific building in the Shiodome area because it was the high-tech kind (water jet and all). I was blown away by two things: How the water jet managed to aim at precisely the correctly location on two separate occasions, and how the faucet and air dryers turned on *immediately* upon putting your hand under it.

By: Jof Arnold

Jof Arnold — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 11:24:53 +0000

Love this article (found via YCombinator News)

Having spent a lot of time in the automotive industry at all ends (from a race mechanic to a project lead in a major international supplier – although now I’m a web entrepreneur!), I’m inclined to agree with you on every front; bad customer service is pretty endemic, and you don’t have to do much to set yourself apart from the rest of the pack.

But for me, the key point of this article is going the extra mile beyond that extra mile. I’m betting that if someone had come up with with a heated toilet seat in the US/UK, that’s where they would have stayed – heated toilet seats. The difference here is that the companies you mention have not stopped at that, and instead run with it as far as they can – and done so with total conviction.

As I write this, it’s interesting that the only other company I can think of who’s made an industry out of doing things that other people invariably poo-poo (ha!) is Nintendo. And, oddly enough, they make something called the Wii. So maybe there are more lessons to be had in the world of bathroom habits

By: Charles

Charles — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 01:11:23 +0000

There is only one flaw in your argument. The majority of toilets in Japan are “traditional style,” they are ceramic trenches in the ground that you squat over. Many Japanese people have never seen or used a “western style” toilet, let alone a high-tech Toto toilet.

The last Japanese government White Paper I read had statistics that about 25% of all Japanese toilets aren’t even attached to sewers or septic tanks, they are little more than one-hole outhouses attached to a holding tank. The tank must be emptied by the “honey wagon” truck once a month or so.

When I lived in Japan, I constantly encountered the most primitive toilet facilities I could every imagine. High tech toilets are exceptionally rare. You are essentially arguing that Japanese toilets are like a Lexus SUV when they are really more like horse and buggies. And don’t even get me started on their primitive sewage treatment facilities (it might horrify you to know that human sewage is still used as agricultural fertilizer).