Rick Steves Loves This Country's Impressive, High-Tech Bathrooms

Japan is known for its beautiful scenery, fascinating cities, and technological advances. Those advances include robot baggage handlers coming to Japanese airports. However, there is one standout item in this unexpectedly affordable Asian country that travel pro Rick Steves loves, and you might be surprised to find out what it is. On his website, Steves talks about visiting Japan and staying in a traditional inn during the winter, mentioning that there generally isn't central heating in places like this. The thing that helped was the high-tech Japanese toilet that featured a heated seat. Steves says, "Dreading the frigid toilet seat, I jockeyed my big body into position. I could still see my breath. Feeling entirely exposed to the cold, I gingerly sat down. The seat ... was heated. Sitting there, I thought, 'I love traveling in Japan.'" 

If you're familiar with the genius that is Japanese toilets, you know there is more to them than just the heated seats. In fact, in a 2019 Facebook post, Steves not only calls the heated toilet seat "one of the most delightful surprises I've experienced over a lifetime," but he also says he enjoys the fact that there are sounds to cover any noises that generally go with a bathroom experience. While you can find advanced tech on toilets in some places in America (Steves says he encountered one in a "five-star Asian-themed hotel in Boston"), they're not very common. If you have yet to see one during your travels, you'll be blown away by all the things they can do. 

High-tech Japanese toilets have a lot of really interesting features, including one Rick Steves mentions in the video that accompanies the aforementioned Facebook post, which is that many of them open and close automatically. This means you don't have to touch anything, which is particularly important when you're traveling. These toilets often have a bidet feature on their control panels (one type is pictured above), with one option for the front and one for the back. (Bidets are common on Japanese toilets. In fact, NPR reports that up to 80% of Japanese homes have them.) Some have a drying function as well. 

You may also see buttons that change the water pressure of the bidet and some offer the option to release a scent to cover up ... well, other scents. If you have a shy bladder, you'll be happy to know that some of these toilets play sounds like birds chirping or flushing water to cover up any sounds you might make. You may even find some toilets that have a sink above the toilet tank so you can wash your hands without even moving from the spot. This really does turn a toilet into a "porcelain throne." Finally, here are some of the best destinations to snap beautiful pictures in Japan for your next visit.