It is a squat toilet in Southeast Asia: a hole in the ground with grips for your feet to stop you from falling in, a bucket to flush and a hose to clean yourself up.
In Africa, it is a long drop – just the hole in the ground. Sometimes you have as much privacy sitting on the loo as you do when sitting on a bus.
You will not so readily complain about trifling discomforts back home once you have used a squat toilet with an upset stomach and a backpack and nowhere fit to put it down. It will seem luxurious to have a locking door, a flush handle, a seat and soft paper.
Yet in Japan, the average Western crapper – the bog standard bog – seems as primitive as any squat toilet, as brutally functional as the long drop. Almost everywhere, there – even in bus stations and cheap hotels – you get a thunder box with a control panel which looks as if it belongs to an aeroplane, or at least a very expensive washing machine.
You will have a heated seat and a deodorising button, in case you stink the place out, and a sound of loudly percolating water you can switch on if you are planning to make a lot of noise.
There will be a jet of warm water you can adjust for aim and pressure, although if it is new to you, it will make you think you have been taken suddenly ill. That is, if you manage not to misunderstand the picture. Many a traveller has left a Japanese restroom angrily after mistaking that button for the flush and squirting himself in the face.
You start to wonder how even the grandest, most demanding people at home can be satisfied with just a locking door, a flush handle, a seat and soft paper.
© Richard Senior 2015
beats the office 
Oh wow, I’ve heard about those toilets in Japan and I look forward to going there (not just for the loos, though); I am now curious about how they feel when using our toilets…
I’m sure the culture shock is the same the other way round. I know in countries which mostly have squat toilets, you sometimes see signs on Western-style toilets telling people not to stand on the seat when using them
Could have done with signs like that at the music festival I’ve just attended!
I can imagine these super-modern Japanese loos being quite frustrating for the unaccustomed visitor – all that complexity and confusion, especially in probable moments of urgency. Interesting though, how the rest of the world is happy to get by in this department without any innovation, unlike the Japanese. 🙂
It gives people something (else) to do in there, I guess. It might be why there is no writing on the walls as there often is at home.
I notice it is made by Panasonic, does it also play music. I suppose being in Japan it would have the option of turning off the singer and projecting the words onto the door in front of you.
A crapeoki.
And then cut the music so you’re just left with the a crapella. In all seriousness, I think some of them do play something on the lines of spa music to mask the noise.