The best toilets in the world are Japanese. Pretty much every house has a john with a heated seat and a bum washer, and there have even toilets sold with embedded music players and spotlights so you don't miss. Heck, Sega even recently released a pee-powered game. Japan's toilet tech is world class.
No wonder this land of wonderful W.C.s is now home to the world's biggest outdoor toilet (even though, honestly, anywhere is conceivably a rest stop, making the entire outdoors the world's biggest bathroom...but whatever).
The city of Ichihara is home to a 200 square meter landscaped women's restroom that allows ladies to do their business in a scenic outdoor garden. The bathroom does have a privacy curtain for those who need it.
It costs approximately US$125,000 a year to care for this bathroom (and another much smaller one nearby). Initially, the idea was to renovate the existing toilets near the city's train station. The end result was this bathroom garden.
The huge toilet is causing an increase of interest in Ichihara, a city that isn't exactly a tourist mecca. "It's not the kind of place that has an amusement park that draws thousands of people every day," Eichi Kirikae, an official at Ichihara city tourism department, told The Wall Street Journal.
Next year, the city will showcase "the world's largest toilet" as an art piece, aiming to increase visitors eager to see the throne, take pictures with it (see above) or just do their business on it. Whether or not more Japanese tourists will give a crap remains to be seen.
‘World's Largest Toilet' Aims to Be Flush With Tourists [WSJ]
(Top photo: 八重子)