Look!: Tokyo’s Toto Showroom

Toto is a brand famous for toilets. Or, more specifically, the Washlet, which visitors to Japan will recognize as the unforgettable toilet with a veritable space deck of controls...

...for warming, squirting water and blowing air on one's hiney, in both male and female versions complete with corresponding blue and pink buttons.

The showroom, on the 26th and 27th floor of a building in the middle of Shinjuku, is a sight to behold. Complete kitchens and bathrooms are staged with windows and glass walls that look out across the infinite Tokyo landscape on all four sides.

Never mind the space-age design of the fixtures themselves (cabinets open and unfold at the touch of a button, for one), to walk into the showroom gives the impression of high-tech domesticity suspended miles above the ground amidst billion-dollar views. Like so much in Tokyo it's disorienting, incongruous and awesome.

Comments (1)

My apartment in Ulsan, South Korea had a magic clean toilet. The greatest thing since ice cubes-until toilet meets potty training western 2 year who won't stop touching buttons.
Picture this. 24 hours on 5 planes, 2 hours on a bus and now it is 4:30 in the morning and she has to "go". I'm swaying with exhaustion and she asks "whatz tis" after pushing the little button with rain drops!!! She asked for months, "Is the potty going to squirt me?" After a little while the "magic" was gone. She was matter of fact about rinse and blow dry. Now squat potties are another whole story!!

posted by Cherokee_Sunshine on November 6th 2007 at 6:50pm
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