Cultural differences around toilets

I like stories about cultural differences. Here’s one from Japan from A Hand in Two Cultures – New York Times.

Or take a simple thing like bathrooms. In Japan, there is no heating system in the toilet, and it is really cold. So we’re used to heated toilet seats. Japanese tourists come to American hotels, and the bathroom is warm but the bench is cool. We really don’t like that.

Japanese toilets in homes are raised like seats like ours.  In public buildings they are in the ground and you squat over them.  I broke all my credit cards that I was carrying in my back pocket that way once …