Toilet Tryouts And Showering For Science | Showering Enthusiast

Quest:

My wife and I recently took one of our “affordable” vacations, meaning that her company paid for her airfare and our hotel, and her frequent flyer miles paid for my ticket. We’ve gotten to Paris, France, and Miami Florida together thanks to her company, which we affectionately call Papa. We went to Japan in October (thanks Papa).

The Sushi was incredible, and Michele, who got up at 3 a.m. to go visit the Tokyo Fish Market, said it was well worth it.

I was interested in the toilets.

I was raised in the Home Energy family to believe that the Japanese, with 150 million citizens living in a country about the size of California, are both very polite and efficiency experts and that all Japanese households (and hotels) had low-flow, dual flush (half a flush for “#1″ and a full flush for “#2″), water efficient toilets. But everywhere we stayed, the toilets had bun warmers! Surely this must use a fair amount of energy.

I discussed the toilet issue with Alan Meier, Home Energy’s Senior Executive Editor, a frequent traveler to Japan, when I got back to work. He assured me that there are strict energy use standards for the bun warmers, even though the majority of Japanese households use them. Alan thinks that it may have something to do with the aging population. When you get old, the circulation doesn’t always work so well.

But what about U.S. bathrooms?