I recently purchased a Japanese toilet, the TOTO Nexus WASHLET+ S7A 1.28 GPF. And I'm prepared to say this might be the single best investment I've ever made. (Okay, besides maybe my Claude Max subscription.)

Here's what I don't understand: the technology exists. It costs $2–4K depending on installation options. Yes, you might need to drill an extra GFCI outlet (which may cost another $500-1K depending on your setup). But as a nation, we can afford this. We spend more on worse things every day like cars (I still don't own one fwiw).

Using a bathroom is literally a part of your daily life, like sleep, that you cannot avoid. And the WASHLET+ delivers a dramatically superior experience to anything you've ever tried before. It's not even close. As with everything in Japan, I have yet to meet a single person who tried it and didn't love it (popularbydesign.org/p/w…).

So why don't folks do this in America or Europe (outside of the bidet belt) for that matter? I think it's because we've internalized this well-intentioned egalitarian idea that all cultures are equal in every dimension (or, if you're an all-in nativist, that all foreign cultures are equally bad). Both positions lead to the same place in the end: refusing to adopt obviously better practices from elsewhere.

Japanese culture around toilets, among many other things, is superior. Full stop. Acknowledging this doesn't require adhering to any racial hierarchy ideology. Some cultures just have figured out certain things better than others. It's as simple as that.

But, in any case, buy the toilet. You'll never go back.