You've been evacuating your bladder and bowels like some kind of filthy, feces-covered troglodyte if you aren't using a Toto brand toilet, according to this in-depth native advertisementarticle in the NY Times Style section, which certainly knows a thing or two about flushing disposable waste matter into a sewage system, amirite? The Toto, which costs up to $10,000, has reportedly transformed once-casual toilet users into hi-tech "washlet" connoisseurs whose bathroom breaks have become transcendent religious experiences resembling the last 20 minutes of 2001:
For those who own Japanese toilets, there is a cultish devotion. They boast heated seats, a bidet function for a rear cleanse and an air-purifying system that deodorizes during use. The need for toilet paper is virtually eliminated (there is an air dryer) and “you left the lid up” squabbles need never take place (the seat lifts and closes automatically in many models).
Sure, you think you're doing okay with your regular basic toilet, even if you have to jiggle the handle weird and pray every time you take a dump. But once your butt gets hit with the spray of a Toto's bidet, you'll never be able to settle for some Plain Jane piece of porcelain, even if you spring for the soft toilet paper. One man held in his pee for the entirety of a nine hour flight, unable to handle an airplane restroom now that he'd become used to the Toto:
The move seems almost masochistic. But in his home and office bathrooms, Mr. Friedman had installed a Toto washlet. To sit upon a standard commode, he said, would be like “going back to the Stone Age.”
One toilet n00b, a Mr. Robert Aboulache, scoffed at the notion that a Toto could be lifechanging, but look who's laughing now!
Before he and his family went on a vacation to Japan, he said, friends who had visited the country told him he would love the toilets. “I thought, ‘How great can the toilets be?’” Mr. Aboulache said. “They were amazing. Some have noisemakers to cover up the sound. You can pivot that little sprayer. The water can be heated or not. We got home, and I thought, ‘This is not the same.’”
Three days later, Mr. Aboulache went online and bought a Toto washlet, which he installed in the shared upstairs bathroom of his home in Los Angeles as a surprise for his wife and son.
“We’ve been delighted,” he said. “It’s our favorite toilet.”
In fact, the Times notes that some people have become so addicted to $1K washlets that living without one is an impossible feat:
For Asian ex-pats, life without a washlet can be a difficult adjustment. Ayako Otoshi, who grew up in Japan, missed the heated-seat experience so much that she and her husband installed a Toto washlet in their apartment in Brooklyn as a cure for homesickness.
“We miss being there,” Ms. Otoshi said. “We wanted to recreate something we have in Japan here.”
In all fairness, I once freaked out at a toilet hole in a public restroom in Italy, so who am I to judge.
