Any foreigner who has travelled in Japan or the region has probably encountered the Japanese 'smart' toilet, which has an electronic console of buttons attached that seems more fit for gaming than relief. The combination of symbols can be completely baffling for anyone without Japanese and unused to such hi-tech facilities. Now the manufacturers in Japan, the Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association, have decided to standardise the symbols to avoid confusing tourists. There should now be no mistaking big flush, small flush, lid raise, seat raise, fan, rear spray, front spray and stop. So will it work? The BBC's Roger hearing asked that to Kelsey Leuzinger, who taught English in Japan for two years, but is now back in Memphis, in the US.</s>System of eight symbols is designed to save Olympic visitors from unnerving surprises using Tokyo’s high-tech WCs

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Navigating the array of buttons on Japan’s high-tech toilets can be a disconcerting experience for the uninitiated, who, expecting to hear a familiar flushing sound, are instead subjected to a sudden, and unwanted, cleansing of the nether regions.

As Japan prepares for an influx of overseas visitors during the 2019 rugby World Cup and the Tokyo Olympics the following year, the country’s sanitation industry has agreed to standardise pictograms on toilets so users know for certain if they are about to receive a blast of warm air or a jet of water.

Nine manufacturers belonging to the Japan sanitary equipment industry association will soon start using the same eight symbols to explain the buttons found on their state-of-the-art WCs.

At a launch event this week, the firms said they had agreed to simplify the pictography in response to complaints from tourists that they are confused by symbols that differ depending on the make of toilet.

In a 2014 survey of 600 foreign visitors, a quarter said they could not understand some of the symbols that appear on the toilet buttons.

The eight new symbols show users how to flush (large and small), open and close the lid, activate the front and back cleanse and drying functions, and trigger the off switch.

The unified icons will appear on toilets sold in Japan from April, according to Jiji Press, which added that makers eventually hoped they would become standard for high-tech toilets sold around the world.

The confusion arose when manufacturers created their own symbols after the first toilet with washing and drying functions appeared in Japan in the mid-1960s.

The toilets, including Toto’s market-leading Washlet, have since become common fixtures in restaurants, hotels and other public places, occasionally to the consternation of visitors who are more accustomed to a simple flush and a lid they open and close manually.

“We are sure the new design of pictograms will help our products become more popular overseas, as well as offer hospitality to foreigners and show that Japan is a country that welcomes tourists,” Madoka Kitamura, head of the industry group and president of Toto, told reporters, according to the Asahi Shimbun.

The government is also considering a revamp of other symbols that some overseas visitors find confusing or offensive, including a swastika-like pictograph used to indicate a Buddhist temple on maps.

The decision to standardise toilet pictography is the latest attempt to make Japan’s toilets more user friendly. Last month, “toilet paper” for germ-infested smartphone screens was installed in dozens of cubicles in the arrivals hall at Narita international airport.

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>> ダウンロードはこちら</s>The article you have been looking for has expired and is not longer available on our system. This is due to newswire licensing terms.</s>If you've ever traveled to Japan, you've probably been amazed by the fancy toilet seats. They are hyper-efficient and hyper-futuristic.

Toto is the best-known brand. But when tourists were surveyed in 2014, according to The Wall Street Journal, a quarter of foreign users said that they didn't understand the various buttons nor their respective functions on a typical Toto toilet.

So, the makers of the high-tech toilets have announced plans to standardize the buttons — using a new set of logos created by the Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association — to make things easier on the tourists.</s>The Japanese have a reputation for appreciating the toilet. The poop emoji is a creation of theirs, as is Everyone Poops—that famous kids book you almost certainly read as a young 'un—while their TV comedies have a reputation for going heavy on the ordure. Japan is also the home of those space-age lavatories with heated seats and two dozen bidet settings, and it's the birthplace of this appetizing dessert treat.

So no one should be surprised that, as we toured last October's Essen gaming fair, the largest board games show on earth, our eyes were caught by a Japanese game called Toire o Yogoshita nowa Dareda? (Or, in English, Who Soiled the Toilet?). Naturally, we had to try it.

This is a bluffing game, pitching two teams—the Clean Freaks and the Dirty Devils—against each other in a battle of wits to keep a restroom clean... or to dirty it all up in secret.

The first thing you notice is the game’s singular art style. The box itself is a flat cylinder, drawn like a toilet—a fact which will become important in due course. The rest of the components, a bundle of cards and (poop) chips, comes packaged in, well, a great big wad of what we’re assuming is authentic Japanese toilet tissue. The cards are charmingly if scratchily illustrated in an old-school manga style, with the chips an especially evocative shade of brown.

The story, such as it is, revolves around a new breed of person stalking the land, inconsiderate with their bowel movements. “Actually,” reads the game’s explainer, “it’s not just that they don’t possess the thoughtful soul, but the fact is they are a crazy breed who truly revel in creating filth, while acting like they are just normal clean people, so they can fit in at the party. It’s not ideal, but let’s all pitch in and help maintain the condition of the toilet until the party finishes!"

The game plays a lot like classic social deduction game The Resistance, though without the portentously nerdy art. (Those with a Board Game Geek account can download a copy of the English rules here.) The Clean Freaks are noble sorts wearing dapper frock coats and top hats, or else they are well-behaved children who absolutely eat up their vegetables. The Dirty Devils are naughty sorts who evidently do not care at all what becomes of their waste. One of them wears a poop hat, not a totally unheard of fashion statement in Japan.

Weirdly, all three Dirty Devils look a little like the British royal family during a bender that has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

In each round, the "leader" nominates a certain number of other players to leave the table one by one and in a particular order to "answer the call of nature." Other players than vote to accept or reject these choices. (After all, the leader might be one of the Dirty Devils!) The selected players then go off to another room—the game suggests using your actual bathroom—and check the condition of a toilet card. It begins clean side up, but Dirty Devils have the option of flipping it over to "dirty." The secret team of phantom poopers—who know each others’ identity throughout—have to make a mess without getting caught, so they can't be too obvious about when they do this.

If the toilet is clean at the end of a round, the Clean Freaks score a point; if not, the Dirty Devils take one. The first team to three wins.

This isn't just a reskin of The Resistance, however. There’s also an action round in Who Soiled the Toilet?, and it adds a dexterity component to the proceedings. Everyone gets to take a turn flipping their nut-brown poo chips at the box lid.

The Clean Freaks, of course, want to get their waste in the bowl because that is the essence of their nature. But Dirty Devils want to look like they want their waste in the bowl, so they must try to miss the pot "accidentally." They may even try to knock other people's poop tokens off the throne. After a couple of beers and a few punishing mind games during earlier rounds, this extra dexterity element is extremely funny—and surprisingly difficult—but it’s probably not of a depth to inspire tournament play.

So it's all a bit different, and the theme is absolutely what makes the game. I cast no shade on its illustrious predecessor; there’s absolutely a time and a place for sci-fi ninja women wearing cybernetic pleather push-up bras—but sometimes you want to unwind with a party game about deliberately defecating on the floor, you know?

Who Soiled the Toilet? is for people with friends who might be down for a fun bluffing game but are turned off by pictures of futuristic aristocrats in weird space gowns. Poop is inherently hilarious, and there's a certain impish innocence to the humor here that makes a game about dropping your guts even funnier. And that's totally fine—not every board game has to be the next cardboard Citizen Kane.</s>Police in Lubbock, Texas are looking for a toilet paper bandit -- yes, you read that right.A suspect was caught on camera breaking into a tire shop on the east side of town. He was seen taking cash from the register, but it's the other item he made off with that left the owner surprised.As he moves to leave, the suspect grabbed a four-pack of toilet paper.The owner said he doesn't recognize the suspect, and she has no idea why he took the toilet paper."The community tries to bring businesses to the east side, and this is why they don't come," said Crest Tires owner Wendy Houston. "It's very very sad, and I'm angry, very angry."Houston said the burglar is responsible for approximately $1,000 in damage. More than $100 was missing from the cash register.</s>
• The airplane toilet as we know it today wasn't introduced to Boeing planes until 1982.
• Toilets all use the Kemper vacuum system, which uses a pneumatic vacuum and a non-stick coating of blue liquid, called Skykem, to deposit waste into a "closed waste system."
• At the end of the flight all the collected waste is vacuumed into another tank on a truck.



There are some things we may never quite understand: how bread turns into toast, what happens to matching socks in the dryer, and how the toilets on airplanes work.

But in the spirit of demystifying the arcane secrets of the universe, we looked into revealing the enigma that is the airplane bathroom.

The modern airplane toilet system was invented by James Kemper in the 1970s. Before then, passengers onboard planes could attend to their duties in a slosh bucket, which would then either decorate the bathroom quarters when the plane hit turbulence or be chucked out the window and land on the unsuspecting earth below.

The Kemper vacuum system first appeared in a Boeing plane in 1982. The system relied on a blue liquid — known as Skykem — a non-stick coating, and vacuum suction. When you press the flush button, a valve opens at the bottom of the toilet bowl and exposes the toilet to a pneumatic vacuum. The toilet’s vacuum swirls its contents and deposits all the collected waste, and that blue liquid, into a “closed waste system.”

At the end of the flight, the toilet’s acquisitions are vacuumed into another tank on the back of a truck. Once the tank onboard the truck is full, it’s emptied out with the rest of the waste from the airport. Where it goes from there is far more mysterious.</s>
Japanese toilet industries agreed to standardize the iconography of electric toilet seat controls in order to make them less confusing for users.