New Zealand defense attache on trial for Washington embassy toilet camera
One of New Zealand's most senior naval officers has gone on trial for placing a secret camera in the unisex toilet of the country's Washington, D.C., embassy. Commodore Alfred Keating has been charged with attempting to make "an intimate visual recording" and is currently on ...
Colorful walls can 'blow away' toilet odor, Japanese study says
Using bathrooms can be an everyday nightmare for children attending Japan's public schools where the restroom is often considered dirty and smelly. But a professor in western Japan has come up with an eye-opening way to blow away the stench. Machiko Yamashita, a professor of environmental ...
Tokyo's Toshima Ward adds artistic touch to public lavatories to enhance user-friendliness
Dilemma: You are in a public park in Tokyo and you desperately need the toilet. You think about holding on until you can find a convenience store, but you realize time is against you. You accept your fate and approach the dimly lit lavatory with some ...
Osaka lavatory signs do more harm than good, say members of LGBT community
Restroom signs for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have drawn an unexpected backlash from sexual minorities in Japan. The city of Osaka put a rainbow-colored sticker representing sexual diversity on the doors of unisex multipurpose restrooms in municipal government buildings in hopes of making ...
Japan has been working to convert its traditional squat toilets to Western-style commodes to accommodate the growing influx of foreign tourists. With many foreign visitors puzzled over how to use squat toilets and even shunning them as "unsanitary," the government has been promoting toilet modernization ...
Toto hopes to clean up with new self-cleaning toilets
With the upcoming 2020 Olympics in mind leading Japanese toilet-maker Toto Ltd. has recently introduced a new type of self-cleaning toilet for public restrooms, aiming to improve bathroom experiences for locals and foreign visitors to Japan. "We're seeing a surge in inbound tourism," said Hirofumi ...
Leading Japanese toilet maker Toto Ltd. is boosting production capacity in Thailand to meet global demand for its Washlet toilets, as well as potential domestic market needs. Toto (Thailand) Co., its wholly owned subsidiary, said it is planning to complete the construction of its second ...
Japan's farms struggle to upgrade restrooms as people with disabilities bolster depleted ranks
The agriculture industry is faced with the problem of improving toilet facilities for people with disabilities as the movement to hire them on farms spreads amid a nationwide decline in farmers. Agri no Mori, a nonprofit organization based in Nabari, Mie Prefecture, is using crowdfunding ...
Only 36% of toilets in public high schools are Western-style: lawmaker survey
Japan may be known as the world leader when it comes to high-tech toilets, but only 35.8 percent of those in prefectural high schools are Western-style. That is what a group of national and prefectural lawmakers have found in a survey they commissioned, saying the ...
A gut feeling that you need an extra toilet
Everybody knows that Japan produces the most technologically advanced toilets in the world. They pretty much do everything except pull up your pants when you're finished. And one of the more pleasant surprises greeting foreign visitors to Japan is the ubiquity and accessibility of ...
Leading toilet maker Toto Ltd. anticipates a recovery in demand by 2019 after weathering a lull triggered by Malaysia's economic downturn, its local distributor says. Livvy Lam, executive director of W. Atelier Bhd., speaking recently for Toto Malaysia Bhd., said market demand this year is ...
Toto Ltd. on Tuesday launched a high-end model of its Washlet bidet toilet series as a flagship product targeting wealthy individuals and hotels across the globe. The Neorest NX with a domestic sticker price of ¥615,600 ($5,590), the highest among the company's items, features a ...
