Wednesday, September 30, 2015

This way to the bathroom?

bathroom, bathrooms, restroom, restrooms, washroom, washrooms, lavatory, lavatories, latrine, latrines, sign, signs, signage

The red arrows point the way to this restaurant's bathroom. Or, do they?

If you look closely, three things are evident. First, the grown man really, really, has to urinate. Second, everyone observing the protagonist is laughing at him. And, third, there is a young boy urinating on the wall.

So, what is this restaurant's message? Is it "this way to the bathroom," or is it "just use the wall?"

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Fully-Automated Toilet

bathroom, bathrooms, restroom, restrooms, washroom, washrooms, lavatory, lavatories, latrine, latrines, toilet, toilets, ablution, ablutions, bidet, bidets, commode, commodes

This is a fully-automated toilet at a restaurant in Gunsan (군산시), North Jeolla Province (전라북도), South Korea (대한민국). As you can see from the size of the controller on the left side of the image, there are quite a few customizable selections for washing and drying yourself hands-free. In fact, there is a process for using this technology to help get your desired bodily process started.

And why the sizable garbage can, you ask? Koreans generally dispose of their toilet paper in the trash, instead of flushing it.

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Respect this toilet.

toilet, toilets, ablution, ablutions, bidet, bidets, commode, commodes, sign, signs, signage

This toilet's lid included instructions on what to NOT do to it. Instead of the traditional circle with a line through it, the "do not do" is expressed through the toilet lid's facial expressions.

We're not sure what the temperature warning is (top left), but the warnings against matches/cigarettes (top center) and disassembly (bottom center) make sense. We're not sure how many people routinely disassemble their toilets, or public toilets like this one for that matter, but we'll let that one slide.

The bucket of water (top right) is interesting, because this is how flushing works. If your toilet has a tank, flushing empties the tank's reservoir into the bowl, forcing the contents out and replacing them with new water. There are inexpensive toilets that do not have tanks, and these are flushed by manually pouring water into the bowl from a bucket or scoop, not unlike what this image indicates.

We don't think the barbell (bottom left) literally refers to gym weights, just to excessive weight in general. However, what if a very large individual needs to operate this toilet?

Finally, the hand in the toilet (bottom right) makes the least sense of all. This could be a warning against tampering with the nozzles found in automatic toilets, the ones that wash and dry you, but this particular toilet did not have that feature. We really don't know why else someone would insert their hand into a toilet bowl. Even if you accidentally drop something into the bowl we would like to think an appropriate glove would be worn.