Background

So my last trip report seemed to interest a fair few people and I thank everyone for the warm comments. What seemed to provoke the most excitement it would seem, was not the fascinating culture of Japan, the wonderful people or the beautiful, it was the electric toilet seats. So given that I am now aware of the core demographic/target audience for my musings I have decided to use my current trip to highlight and review some of the range of electric toilets available in this fantastic country.

“So are you just going to post a lot of photos of toilets?” I hear you ask. Well that would be ridiculous of course; I mean who in their right mind would want to look at toilet lids? No-one! That’s why I am also going to do my best to review said toilet lids, highlight some of the key features and assign marks accordingly

Oh, I’ll also throw in a few bits about food and flying just for the dullards who aren’t interested in Japanese lavatories facilities.

Getting to Japan

My flight out to Japan was by way of British Airways as usual, company policy demands that we fly in the boiler room to keep us all honest and not get ideas above our station, with ~120k miles last year flown down the back my DVT is coming along nicely. With Japan being about the furthest I fly for work I usually burn miles if possible as I urn 12k miles and need 15k to move up a cabin. On this trip that meant a jump from World Traveller (coach) on the way out to World Traveller+ (bigger seats, more legroom, slightly better food) and from WT+ on the way back (the fare was more or less the same as Y) to Club (business) on the way back.

So anyway I headed out the door early on Sunday morning bound for Heathrow Terminal 5 and BA 5 to Narita. The flight is at a ludicrous time of 12:40 and lasting ~11:30 this means you land at midnight UK time to be presented with a full day in front of you, so you have a mostly day flight out with a full day to deal with when you land. The Haneda is even worse as it leaves around 8 in the morning and lands before 5, meaning that you get no night whatsoever. Why BA can’t get better slots I don’t know, it’s been suggested that its JAL protectionism but I will let those more knowledgeable than myself confirm or deny.

So having arrived at Heathrow I preceded to the first class lounge for some breakfast. Toilet update! Very poor toilets in the lounge, no electrical wizardry at all, not heated, no sprays or lights or music, poor showing by us Brits I say, clearly lagging Japan in terms of bog sophistication.
Anyway I won’t bother with photos of the lounge, there are plenty out there already and it’s a big room with some seats, fairly good food (especially breakfast) and decent booze.

BA 5 – LHR to NRT

One of the reasons I fly to Narita instead of Haneda apart from the better timing and even though NRT is less convenient for getting to our office in Shin-Yokohama is the fact that the NRT route is served by a shiny new 777-300. The main benefit of the BA 773 is that you are guaranteed the latest seats throughout the plain with new WT and WT+ installed down the back. You also get the new AVOD with a much wider choice than the old system in aircraft with old WT(+) cabins, although in my experience the new AA system on their 773s is even better. I’m a big fan of the new traveller plus seat and it is a lot more conformable than the old one and it feel roomier, although this may be an illusion. I would suggest that if you are forced to sit upright for 12 hours you would be hard pressed to find a better product out there although I have heard that Qantas W is good as well.

So we headed off for Japan, 11 hours 10 minutes of flying ahead of me and I settled in to watch the excellent gravity, good Captain Phillips and junky Thor 2. I usually watch garbage on planes as my brain doesn’t want to bother processing movies of any substance, indeed something about the altitude seems to make junk seem better and there have been occasions I’ve watched something in the air, thought it was brilliant, re-watched it on the ground only to realise is was a pile of garbage.

About an hour in Lunch was served and in W on BA this means a normal Y meal but with a club world main. The choice was between beef or sea-bream and as the former is usually about as tender as tyre rubber I went for the Japanese option of the fish.


Menu


Lunch

The fish turned out to be a good choice as, while horrendously overcooked as always, at least I didn’t need a chainsaw to cut it and it was tasty with the sauce offsetting any dryness.

An hour or so before landing we were served breakfast (at midnight) with a choice of a full English or an omelette, I went for the former and this was very good considering it was the standard Y meal.


Breakfast

After breakfast and another hour we touched down in Japan, passed through customs and into the world of the heated toilet seat.


You know you’re in Japan when you suitcases come out as well ordered as this!

So having left the airport and with a day to kill I headed to Shin-Yokohama to see how long I could stay awake for. Last time I came to Japan I got to the hotel had a few hours kip and then headed to the office, I don’t think this did me any favours in terms of jet lag latter in the week so this time I stuck it out and stayed up. Having checked into the hotel, the Associa Shin-Yokohama, an unremarkable but perfectly pleasant business hotel, I freshened up and headed for the office whereupon I encountered my first toilet lid.

Toilet Lid 1



This model, an Inax Shower Toilet (I forgot to bring my shampoo), you will notice goes for the all in one approach to lavatorial manipulation with the loo controls attached to the side of the lid. This clearly has benefit in terms of packaging and installation but is less convenient as when required a twisting motion is need to see what you are pressing, certainly don’t want to unleash a bidet on oneself when simply requiring a quick shower! Instructions are provided on the wall of the cubicle and this is where this particular model loses marks as a number of exciting sounding features advertised on the instructions weren’t in fact present on the lid itself, for example “Flushing sound (exclusively for women)”.



I was most disappointed by the lack of the flushing sound feature as I was keen to learn why, as a man, I was unqualified to use it. I was also intrigued about what sound was actually made, I assume it was something suitably lady-like (some Mozart perhaps) and loud enough to drown out the sounds of straining.

Having overcome my disappointment at the lack of the lady flushing, I award this particular model as follows:

Overall 6 out of 10 points lost on account of the false advertising and disappointment at the aforementioned feminine flush missing feature.

More lids, some food and a baffling ATM tomorrow….