hello world searching online I found out that when it comes to Tokyo's public toilets it's safe to say that they are the world standard is it though so what does crew care commercial cleaning in New Zealand think makes Tokyo's public toilets the standard not only are the facilities extremely clean but they also boast technological advancements for one THB days have multiple buttons to adjust water pressure and angle you can also activate Ambient sound to mask toilet noises okay so it's the cleanliness and Tech they also often have baby seats for kids and toilet paper that is flushable huh I know I've been to some places in the world that don't want you to flush the toilet paper but I didn't know this would be a major point in favor of Tokyo's toilets I'm sure that others would argue that it's the cool designs like this glass toilet that goes opaque when it's being used are this work work of art that can be operated using your voice but what I primarily think of is that when I need to go and I have to go often because I've been an H2O homie since before the term even existed there's almost always a publicly accessible toilet close by it's actually open and it's clean like Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park said where does he think he's going when you got to go you got to go all right so I was driving around and I need to go pee and I saw oh wait there's a park so I'm going to go to the bathroom because there's always a bathroom by the parks and let's check it out here we go and western style as well but in most Parks like this there's probably oh we got soap look at this it's kind of rare but it's all good so I actually spent a lot of time compiling all the different things I think you could use to judge a public toilet does it have toilet paper is the toilet style sit down or squat is there soap is there running water is there a bedet I want to get into all those little details but the overarching conclusion I came down to is that people need a clean place to do their business where and when they need to and bathrooms need to be able to accommodate people of different needs whether they're in a wheelchair have a colos bag or using a cane or don't fit into a binary gender category so does Japan have toilets where and when you need them I'll First share my personal experiences so you can understand the different places you can find toilets and then after that we'll get into the data but yeah I've always been able to find a toilet anywhere in Japan if I'm traveling by train unless it's a very tiny station in a rural area I've always found a toilet if I'm traveling by foot or bike I simply need to find a park which almost always has a toilet and the thing I think is Handy is that in dense walkable cities like Tokyo there are parks every few hundred meters even if it's a tiny pocket park there's still a good chance that they'll have a toilet if I'm traveling by car then convenience stores and parking or service areas always have a toilet available so no matter how I'm traveling or where I'm traveling to there's generally a toilet available within 5 to 10 minutes of where I am at worst case it's maybe 30 minutes like in toori the least populated prefecture in Japan you can be traveling along some small Road and you'll come across a public toilet for those wondering it's near a trail head for hiking but you'll find toilets like this at observation points and other areas where visitors might stop and if you go really remote like at the top of a mountain you can still find toilets and this is not one of those touristy Japanese mountains with gondolas this is a proper hike up Mount shirakami sure it's not a flush toilet and you need to take the toilet paper with you but come on it's quite handy so the question you might be asking is if the availability of toilets is anything special or not I mean anecdotally the only part of Japan that I've ever had a hard time finding a toilet was an idot ishigaki National Park a protected island in the south of Japan where I was doing a jungle tour with my family we were told in advance that in order to preserve the natural ecosystem that we wouldn't be able to relieve ourselves in nature they did have an emergency disposable toilet area just in case and yeah I did make use of it it and surprisingly I don't have pictures of the toilet but personal experience aside let's look at the data as to how many public toilets there are in Japan and I went on a bit of a journey trying to find that data if you do a quick internet search you'll probably come across this nice infographic which lists Iceland as the country with the most public toilets per capita at 56 per 100,000 residents I think this kind of makes sense since they only have a population approaching 400,000 so you only need about 200 Public toilets to hit that that number if you scroll down a bit you'll find Japan which is listed as having 11 this doesn't look like anything impressive at all if you scroll down even more the source of the data is p place which doesn't even exist as a website anymore so to get more reliable data I had to go directly to the sources I was able to find that for the 23 special WS of Tokyo which has a population of 9.7 million there are 4,151 outdoor public toilets this works out to 43 toilets per 100,000 residents I realized that Tokyo's 23 Wards aren't the whole of Japan but if you put these numbers against that infog graphic Tokyo is all of a sudden near the top of that list but the thing about that number is that it's only counting the outdoor public toilets when we zeroed into to one of Tokyo's Wards chotoku and counted the number of indoor public toilets found in community centers libraries City Halls and fitness centers we found that the total number of public toilets increased by more than 50% if we assume that the other Wards have similar ratios then the number of indoor and outdoor public toilets in Tokyo too is more like 60 for 100,000 residents that would put Tokyo at the top of the list and if you want to be practical as to what the general public will use to relieve themselves there's a whole category of toilets that are not counted publicly accessible private toilets these are toilets found in Office Buildings convenience stores train stations malls and hotels if you're wondering about the Office Buildings there are often food floors filled with restaurants so it's normal for the average person to go there eat and use the facilities the expectation for all these places is that you'd be a customer whether it's buying a rice ball at the comini or riding the train however washroom doors are not locked by key and you generally don't need to ask permission to use the facilities so in practice you can easily use them without paying anything conveniently chotu did a count of them in the leadup to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and they vastly outnumbered the amount of public toilets so much so that in chotoku there are 398 public and publicly accessible but private toilets per 100,000 residents now chotu doesn't have many residents only 66,000 so I think it's easy for the numbers to get skewed High just like in Iceland where I'm assuming that the large number of tourists versus local population also skews the numbers if you only consider Japan's convenience stores there are 56,000 for Japan's population of 126 million that's 44 convenience stores per 100,000 residents now not all convenience stores have toilets some are located in Office Buildings or train stations which would provide their own facilities but it's a good bet that if you find a convenient store you'll either find a toilet inside or close by now instead of Tokyo what if I looked at a very small town I recently stayed in kucho in toori which has a population of only 2,700 I can easily count five public toilets in the area which would give a ratio of 185 toilets per 100,000 residents if you add in the publicly accessible private toilets this number would more than double in this area I think it's the lack of population that makes it easy to skew the numbers high so perhaps looking at the number of toilets per square kilometer is a better data point if again you do a quick internet search you'll find that Paris comes out on top with 6.72 toilets per square kilometer this must undoubtedly include their 400 self-cleaning caets which are Universal toilets that one person can use at a time Tokyo isn't included in this list but the ratio of outdoor public toilets per square kilometer in Tokyo's 23 special WS is 6.7 which is basically the same as paris's stat of course this doesn't include Tokyo's indoor public toilets which would probably bring that number closer to 10 another thing to consider is that most public toilets in Japan usually serve at least three people at a time which means that number could be closer to 30 but hey if you took Paris or Iceland and really dug into the data perhaps their numbers would be vastly boosted as well so even though I spent a lot of time combing through the data I'm not entirely convinced that it means that much the thing that I do know is that personally no matter where I've traveled to in Japan I've been easily able to find a toilet whether it's a 100% free public toilet or a publicly accessible private toilet where payment is optional all right so despite talking about the number of toilets this is probably not what people online think about when they say Japan's toilets are awesome part of it is that they're clean I won't pretend the toilets are always sparkling clean but I generally find them to be wellmaintained now I think you can attribute this to two main things the people cleaning and maintaining them and the people using them but a third factor to consider is the number of users if a toilet is only getting 10 users a day once a day cleaning should be sufficient but if the toilet is getting a th000 users then that frequency would need to be higher so we inquired with a few WS around Tokyo and it seems like the standard frequency of cleaning for outdoor public toilets is once a day with higher traffic facilities getting cleaned twice a day and very high traffic getting cleaned up to three times a day this tells me that there's a big enough Gap in cleaning times that in order to stay clean the toilets have to be respected by the users as well I covered this this in a previous video about how Japan keeps clean but students in elementary and middle school are required to clean up their schools bathrooms they don't have a janitor for this task whatever mess they make their classmates are going to have to clean it up so there's that social pressure to keep things nice and tidy I think this carries over to their usage of public bathrooms as well researching about why there's a lack of public washrooms in North America I came across this study by the University of Toronto that found that undesirable behaviors associated with homeless people including cluding vandalism drug use and sexual activity have repeatedly been named as leading reasons for the closure of existing public toilets and the reluctance to provide additional public toilets I made a series about homelessness in Japan and during that I found out that Japan doesn't have a large homeless population among many reasons there's a lack of hard drug usage so there's not a large population of users that will be shooting up in bathrooms creating a dangerous environment and unlike in the west there wasn't a big deinstitutionalization movement which means many of the seriously mentally ill didn't end up on the streets researchers found that a key setting for overdoses in BC is bathrooms every month in BC more than 50 overdoses happen in bathrooms in Vancouver drug use in bathrooms is a very real problem which is why you'll have to ask for keys or passcodes for private bathrooms like at this coffee shop or why they have this insanely annoying sound at this bathroom in the park it's obviously there to prevent anyone from wanting to stay for any longer than absolutely necessary that doesn't stop quick vandalism as you can tell from these burn marks and this painted over graffiti but I'm assuming it does help to minimize it but beyond those more serious issues there's also often a simple lack of respect for the space whether it's leaving garbage on the ground not flushing the toilet or not getting your business on the toilet seats floors or walls again I'm not saying Japanese residents are perfect but I think most would agree that Japan doesn't have the same level of problem with its users that North America has oh people left garbage in there and you know what even the fancy Tokyo toilet project has been subject to vandalism when a couple of their toilets were graffitied and damaged the Tokyo toilet project by the way is the one where they hired star Architects to design 17 public toilets around shibba one of the creators for the project and the chairman of the Japan toilet association yes they have an associ had this to say about the project while Japanese toilets are clean and boast some of the most advanced technology in the world public toilets still have a negative image of being dark dirty smelly and scary the toilet is not just a place to defecate but a small private room in the city where people can take a breather and refresh themselves in order to maintain and promote comfortable public restrooms it is important that everyone involved in such restrooms including the designers Builders users and those involved in maintenance become attached to the restroom and think this is my restroom to me that really spells out what makes Japan's public toilets successful it's the attitude of this is my restroom from everyone involved but as much as Outsiders like me might think Japan's public toilets are great it's not what Japanese themselves think by far the thing that both Japanese men and women want in a bathroom outside of their home is cleanliness and in fact among women the use of outdoor public toilets is incredibly low 52% don't even use them and 38% sell s use so only 10% even use it on a regular basis with men it's different only 20% never use and there's a good 30% chunk that do use it on a regular basis the reason the numbers are so low is because they either think the toilets aren't clean or aren't safe now an area that Japan has done an exceptional job in is creating Universal toilets that are accessible to anyone it's becoming a standard in all new builds and I'll show a few of them this one is located at a parking service area where you can pull right up to the toilet it's it's kind of like the Swiss army knife of toilets that can accommodate people at all stages of life this one even has emergency buttons for those who need help okay lie down inform okay this is actually one of the nicest public bathrooms I've seen this is in Narita Airport look at this wow if you look past the surface level things like the hanging lights and tiles which I think look great by the way you'll notice a lot of useful design features and that different stalls will specialize in different things the regular stalls all have washlets or in other words bedet but they have a few bigger stalls for those with special needs this has change stations the first is a platform that pulls out so you can take your shoes off stand on it and change your clothes and of course this one is for changing babies or toddlers over in the corner there's an extra sink by the toilet the purpose of I'm actually unsure of outside of the men's washroom is where the universal washroom is found it has a sink on the left for people with colostomy bags those are bags that collect body waste whether it's because of cancer or an inflammatory bowel disease and next to the sink is a multi-purpose table which can be used for adults that need toilet or dressing assistance while all the sit down toilets have baby holders I think having them next to the nals is also a nice touch so in Japanese the universal toilets are called Data demo which literally translates as anyone can use they always have wheelchair access but sometimes you'll hear the term barrier-free used for wheelchair access as well if you're ever unsure of what accommodations a toilet has they usually have simple iconography on the outside another interesting feature found in some public toilets are AED devices which are automated external defibrillators that can restart someone's heart in the case of cardiac arrest it's good to wrap things up I want to address some of the good and bad things about Japanese toilets perhaps the number one thing I've heard from people that shocks them is that often urinal are very visible from the outside the head of the Japan toilet Association had this to say about the phenomenon public toilets have an open design because Japanese want to be able to see inside before entering the reporter then explained that it's to make sure no one's lurking in the loop and simple designs without privacy walls take up less space and are cheaper to construct you may find Visible urinals surprising since toilet stalls on the other hand and do provide full privacy with no gaps on the sides of doors what is now being rectified more and more is the lack of soap or hand dryers like in these washrooms on the riverbank they all have running water but soap isn't to be seen even this fancy Tokyo toilet doesn't have soap at their handwashing stations and I checked inside and no there's no soap there either although I should point out that after Co I have noticed an increase in places that carry soap a really good thing in my books is that most outdoor toilets I've encountered are open 247 365 days a year in North America I've often seen them Clos for the night or how like this viewer sent in for the season but in Japan outdoor toilets are almost always open a few decades ago squat toilets were much more common but the standard nowadays is western style toilets and they do often come with pday and heated SE as with many locations around Japan there is often no garbage bins although women's facilities will have a small waist bin for feminine hygiene products most toilets do have little hooks for bags umbrellas or jackets even next to urals which is always convenient that's a sea cleaner by the way which is kind of Handy one thing that they don't all have but I think is a good idea are these disinfectant sprays that you can put on toilet paper to wipe the seat with something I didn't notice until I looked at all the footage is that they usually have regular mirrors as opposed to Polished metal are nothing at all I feel safe in attributing the common occurrence of mirrors to the lack of vandalism but one of the biggest things I enjoy there's always water beside the toilet so you can wash your hands have a drink of water all the water is drinkable safe all in all while I think Japanese toilets aren't perfect I still find them pretty awesome what are public toilets like where you're from and actually I did get some photos from a few of you in the community in Singapore something I found interesting was that there's a special card that senior citizens and people with disabilities have that they can tap to use the handicapped toilet in the mall they have special rooms for nursing mothers which is actually very similar to Japan at one of their upscale malls they have flowers and vases a terrarium and air fresheners with lovely scents on the outside they even have a display showing how busy the room is the only thing they seem to be missing are bedet in Vienna Austria the public toilet cost 50 for anyone over 14 they have a nice classic look and in India I received a few images of different toilets the smart public toilet is a coin operated self-washing toilet thanks for watching see you next time peace
