This is an automatic sanitizing toilet in a public washroom located near the Hankyu Arashiyama Station (阪急嵐山駅).
Official description at the facility:
- The toilet seat, toilet bowl, and floor are automatically cleansed after each use.
- Fully equipped with heating and air conditioning, background music, baby seat, handrails, mirror hand soap, toilet paper, hanger, dust bin, sanitary napkin disposal etc.
- In case of need, there is a direct line to our administration center so you can call us 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
My thoughts on this facility:
- pretty interesting to see such engineering effort to create this fully automated self-cleaning public washroom. However, I cannot quite understand what justifies the construction of such self maintaining facility, especially when this is built near a train station rather than a remote site.
- As a user of this washroom knowing there is no human operating it at most of the time, it is reassuring to see the telephone near it with a guarantee to be able to contact this administration centre 24/7. More importantly, it’s the most helpless moment of all when people are stucked in washroom
- Thinking further from the previous point, as we’re at the age of many self-serving and automated systems such as ATM, Online Banking and vending machines, it gives a sense of reassurance when there is a human operator providing assistance in case of emergency.Another example is the Loppi self-serving ticket machine at the Lawson convenient store (http://www.lawson.co.jp/loppi/). In spite of the pretty comprehensive touch interface, there is also a telephone right next to the screen, so that you can always get a human operator to ask questions in case you need assistance.
