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| Above, a modern Japanese washlet toilet. Photo by Armand Vaquer. |
Foreigners who travel in Japan have a fear: having to use a Japanese squat toilet. Many fear that they would lose their balance in the middle of relieving themselves and fall backwards into the toilet.
Well, they can rest easier since the Japanese government plans to replace the "squatters" with western style sit-down toilets.
According to NHK:
The Japanese government will launch a project to convert all traditional squat toilets in popular tourist destinations into sit-on types that are more commonly used in other developed countries.
The project is part of the government's efforts to boost the annual number of foreign visitors to 40 million by 2020, when Tokyo hosts the Olympics and Paralympics. The figure is about 1.7 times larger than that for 2017.
According to the Japan Tourism Agency, about 40 percent of the toilets at 4,000 locations in popular tourist spots in Japan are traditional types which require users to squat over them. These toilets put off many foreign visitors.
One thing I have always wondered about: how do elderly people with back, leg and knee problems handle using the squatters? I would think that people with these problems would have great difficulty in using "the loo".
To read more, go here.
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