A Toilet by Any Other Name would Smell Like . . .

If I remember my Hamlet, the character of that name said to the ghost of his father, "from the tables of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond memories, all forms, all pressures past, that youth and observation copied there, and thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain, unmixed with baser matter." (As you'll see below, Shakespeare was right on point, as usual.)

The good King Claudius was lucky - to the extent a poisoned man could be - that he didn't have me for a son. I'm afraid I'd have been entirely unable to avoid mixing in the baser matter. "At least I know it may be so" in today's post; I am inclined to talk about toilets.

In the old days one was lucky to find a sit down toilet in Japan. Many were porcelain fixtures mostly flush with the surrounding floor, pun intended. 

We used to call those "squatters." Not the same as an unwelcome individual camping on your property, but about the same degree of desirability. 

But then, there were two types of those. One that actually did flush, and another that sat above a cavity under the house in a sort of septic system meets latrine sort of way. Every month a guy came around to clean out the holding bin, and you were more than happy to pay his charges, given the alternatives. This type of toilet was known by some of us a the "dropper."

Well, times have really changed for the humble toilet. One can scarcely visit any part of Asia today without encountering a bidet toilet, complete, so it would seem, with an operating system and a dozen buttons, generally in a language you either can't read, or are not inclined to at those particular moments.

Many of these units include a seat warmer. Desirable though it may seem in the unheated bathrooms you're also likely to encounter, I find it a bit disconcerting, as though I may have followed a little too closely behind the previous guy.

As for the bidet, perhaps I'd see it differently if it were dedicated, but I have a hard time wanting to be that intimate with a device that's shared by others, particularly in a hotel room or public space. It's about enough to make the old squatters sound good. But I do think I can live without encountering another dropper.