Dirt, stains, effluent, material, the load, waste, matter. These are the words my tour guides at Toto's toilet factory and research center in Kyushu used to verbally pirouette around what exactly its ...

The Japan National Tourism Organization calculated that the first half of 2024 saw almost 18 million visitors to the country, outpacing by a large margin the same period for 2019, which had a ...

I will always remember the first time I walked into a Tokyo bathroom and, with the automatic lift of its lid, a Japanese “smart toilet” happily greeted me. It didn’t end there. Mounted to the wall was ...

Tokyo — The latest must-have product to take Japan by storm isn't high-tech and it certainly isn't garnering rave reviews in glossy design magazines. The country where electronically controlled, ...

The past century has been one of relentless innovation. But in the West the humble toilet is a curious exception. By the early 20th century, free-standing flush toilets with U-bend plumbing were being ...