[unhappy_meaning]

In almost all of SE Asia, especially Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, all of the toilets come with a hand-held sprayer. They also had this in the Doha airport and I'm not sure how common this style is outside of SE Asia but I'm guessing it's common. Japanese style bidets are very common in Korean households as well and I'm sure its easily a billion dollar business.

It is nice but the functionality is quite difficult for a person who's not used to this whatsoever. After you're done sh*ing, you grab the handheld sprayer and turn it upside down and reach behind you toward your butt and try as best as you can to aim it into your anus to wash as best as you can. People who have been doing this their whole lives can probably aim with a precision of a Marine Corp Sniper but to us, we look at it as alien technology. It's is quite difficult to use for a first timer and there are factors that worry us.

If its not aimed correctly, where does the splash go? If you're lucky it stays in the toilet boil. However if your aim is off, you can completely miss your anus and either shoot to much under or over which will shoot the water outside of the toilet bowl.

Also when I was using the bathroom in the Doha airport, the handheld sprayer had a soap dispenser next to it. I was curious what it was for so I YouTube'd and searched for instructions on what the soap dispenser was for and (kind-of) to my surprise it was soap to lather and clean your anus with your other free hand. After you lather and clean, you basically rinse your hand with the hose as well.

[gruez]

>If its not aimed correctly, where does the splash go? If you're lucky it stays in the toilet boil. However if your aim is off, you can completely miss your anus and either shoot to much under or over which will shoot the water outside of the toilet bowl.

so slowly squeeze the trigger to confirm the aim is correct, rather than going full blast at the start?

[zdc1]

The triggers can be quite stiff. If you're unfamiliar it's easy to try to incrementally add pressure and still go from 0-100 with them.

Another option is to adjust the water connection valve at the start of the host so its not fully open, but by the time you notice the valve, you're probably already familiar enough to aim straight.

The water pressure can also be startlingly strong, but you also get used to that.

[colonial]

When I interned abroad in Singapore at a small-time IT firm, the office was in an industrial building that had, uh, less than stellar communal facilities. I at least had the foresight to test the sprayer before use, but I swear it was binary on/off. There wasn't a pressure control knob or anything upstream either.

I eventually got used to blasting myself clean, but I still prefer TP.

[geodel]

You are right about Asians ones. The ones I used in India However what I have gotten in american bathrooms are pretty decent with flow control are supply and handle bar depending on how much you squeeze. And with filters and all in place water comes with soft gushing way like American faucets.

In my experience even least fancy American bathrooms are vastly more functional and cleaner by design than what I get in my trips to India in homes or even 4 star hotels.

[ssivark]

Common-use toilets in India can often be badly maintained, but it's also worth pointing out that there is also a cultural relativism in approaches to cleanliness in the bathroom.

- For Indians, water & sunlight are the best cleansing/disinfecting agents. A bathroom that has been rinsed thoroughly with water+soap, and then dried in sunlight is the cleanest it could ever be. Indian bathrooms typically have windows allowing ample sunlight, and are almost completely covered in stone/tiles to make this whole process easy.

- For this reason, Indian visitors have a hard time adjusting to apartment bathrooms in the US -- which are almost always designed to never have any wetness outside the bath tub / shower area. These bathrooms can never ever be rinsed clean (there is no outlet to drain water!) or dried in the sunlight (because there is no window! just the way apartment layouts are optimized).

- This also means that American bathrooms need an active ventilation system -- which works with varying levels of effectiveness -- and has a bunch of corollaries such as incidences of mold, etc. Residual humidity in American bathrooms is a significant problem, complicated by the use of wood/drywall/carpet in apartments.

- For Americans, the bathroom space being dry is one of the most important symptoms of cleanliness. Wet somehow means soiled/used/disgusting -- even if it is just clean water on the bathroom floor. American bathrooms & processes -- both home and public/shared -- are designed to optimize for this experience.

- The traditional style Indian toilets involve squatting. Being contact-free, this is way more hygenic in comparison to the "western" style toilets -- where the excretory areas of different people come into secondary contact through a common surface. When this does get addressed, the western solution to this again hinges on dryness -- using a sheet of paper (or just unrolled toilet paper) as a disposable seat cover.

- Western style (seated) toilets have become increasingly common in India though (because sitting is more comfortable than squatting), but they typically have a small hand-held shower and are unlikely to feature any toilet paper.

- The same principle of washed -vs- dry as "clean" reflects again in how the two cultures choose to clean themselves after going to the loo. In India it is traditional to thoroughly rinse one's behind with soap and water (as OP mentioned in the experience at the Doha airport) and then dry it in various ways, while American toilets are designed for wiping with dry paper and sometimes even just using a hand sanitizer afterwards (not always rinsing hands with water/soap).

- Glossing over the comparison of what cleanliness means in each of these cases, I'm given to understand that the operating pattern of repeatedly rubbing dry paper on sensitive areas while trying to get them clean makes anal hemorrhoids far more common in the US.

- The contrasts help shed light on how people of each culture have a huge shock when first experiencing a bathroom from the other. Given how western cultural mores tend to be defaults in online spaces, the culture shock of an American encountering an Indian bathroom is easier to sympathize with. Likewise, many Indians struggle to feel comfortable with the quality of sanitation allowed by an American bathroom, and it takes a lot of conditioning to get used to :-)

[apwell23]

> Wet somehow means soiled/used/disgusting

my american born indian nieces and nephews can never get used to indian toilets for this reason. This is one of the main reasons they are dying to go back when they visit india.

[bokoharambe]

I really appreciate this writeup!

[mixmastamyk]

Yeah this overstates the problem. Sure there’s a learning curve but spraying all over didn’t happen for me.

[latchkey]

it is often all or nothing.

[firejake308]

Yeah, depends on how sensitive the trigger is, which is something you can't always control at a public restroom

[mtalantikite]

> … but the functionality is quite difficult for a person who's not used to this whatsoever.

I guess for some definition of difficult? Honestly it takes about 5 seconds to get used to and then you can never go back to using just toilet paper.

[saagarjha]

No, they're actually miserable and I strongly prefer toilet paper (yes, I have read all the comments about whether you'd use toilet paper if it touched any other part of your body, etc.) Most parts of the world literally just spray cold water at you; some of them also require you to aim. Toilet paper is a lot neater than this.

[stavros]

It's neater in its application, not neater at its result. As you (and the article) mention, there's no way I'd trust wiping off with toilet paper if I got some paint on my hands, even though it's simpler than washing.

[apwell23]

you prbly have gut inflammation if you are having messy poops that get all over your anus

[saagarjha]

While I don't completely disagree with the argument, I do think it is worth pointing out that your hands touch other people. People often live with sweaty armpits, which is obviously a lesser version of the problem, but I think still worth considering: we put up with things that go in covered, mostly hidden places.

[stavros]

Maybe I'm a bit extra in this, but I do have a mental bit for how clean my hands are. If I've just washed them, they're "clean" (clean enough to put in my mouth). If I've touched anything, or any person's hands, they aren't.

[saagarjha]

I do that too but at some point I’ve just got to exist

[mtalantikite]

I mean hey, if you want to walk around like that by all means. Maybe it's my ancestral Muslim side coming out, but I just feel dirty without cleaning myself afterwards.

Also, the water isn't that cold, even in the dead of winter here in the north east. And if you can't aim from that close I'm not sure what to tell you!

[schiffern]

Having used all three, the neatest system IMO is to everyday carry a spray bottle of 70% isopropanol. Beyond just convenient hand sanitizer, this lets your wet the paper so you can finish with 2-3 wet wipes (typ. 2x dry + 2x wet). If the paper's thin, double it over a couple more times if needed.

It breaks down like TP (because it is TP), so this won't create a 100+ ton 'fatberg' in the sewer like commercial wet wipes can do.[0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drljNVrA4_k

[mtalantikite]

I'm here for even more extreme cleaning techniques to appease my OCD. Thanks!

Definitely cheaper than carrying around a TOTO portable bidet: https://www.totousa.com/travel-washlet

[Xss3]

Im not sure thatd be healthy.

[schiffern]

Why would you think that?

IPA is an extremely common ingredient in commercial wet wipes, so presumably you're not implying it's somehow unhealthy.

[barbazoo]

Not sure having a clean bum is a religious thing. Source: Atheist with a bidet.

[mtalantikite]

Oh, of course it's not -- I was just playing around -- but cleanliness is something that is really emphasized in Muslim communities [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_purity_in_Islam#Hygieni...

[Brajeshwar]

At home, combine this with the western paper and now you have a dry body as you walk out. So, you can clean with the spray, and you get wet, and dry with the paper for an end-to-end solution.

[pixelbro]

> try as best as you can to aim it into your anus to wash as best as you can

This seems like a great way to spray shit everywhere and is not at all how I learned to use those. What I do is soap one hand, aim the jet into the toilet past the anus with the other hand (jet vector orthogonal to the anus's normal vector), then go to town on it with soap and water. It's foolproof and you get very clean.

How has nobody mentioned this? I feel like I'm on crazy pills, is everyone seriously blasting a jet directly at their chocolate starfish?

[narratives1]

Yet here I am on the other side surprised to hear you and others saying you’re lathering your poopy butt with your hands in a restaurant bathroom

We all gotta wash our butts, but it just seems more civilized to do it in the shower as you can get everything clean, you didn’t just crap, and you’re not eating with those same hands immediately afterwards.

Toilet paper + wet wipes are 100x more sanitary than what you describe

[barbazoo]

Wet wipes sure if you dispose of them correctly. Don’t just externalizer the problem to the sewer system.

[Xss3]

Many are flushable nowadays.

[marcusb]

I bought $25 versions of this on Amazon during COVID... We did not anticipate or have any of problems you described.

[kappi]

most bidets starts leaking after 6-12 months. It is a flood hazard if the hose breaks.

[EliRivers]

"most bidets starts leaking after 6-12 months."

Well that just doesn't sound true at all. I would definitely remember if it leaked every year. Do you have any evidence for this? A bidet is pretty basic plumbing, and basic plumbing can go decades without leaking.

I guess if someone goes out and buys cheap parts that fail fast, and always does that, then you'll get some people whose plumbing fails every six months and everyone else goes years or decades without problems.

[marcusb]

> Well that just doesn't sound true at all.

That would be because it is not true.

[marcusb]

I must be the luckiest person in the world, then. The three I purchased have been installed for five years now, with zero leaks.

[barbazoo]

Along with me. So lucky.

[polygloty]

Have same spray bidet for 7 years. Haven't leaked a single drop. It's probability to leak is as good as any other faucet at this point

[rickyc091]

I've been using the $20-25 ones since covid as well, so that's been six years without any issues. Knock on wood that something doesn't happen shortly.

[Belopolye]

Big Toilet Paper needs to try harder than this.

[maxglute]

I am always surprised those sprayers don't splatter shit everywhere, maybe there's some self selection bias going on in that only pros hose in public facilities. Or they're just well maintained. I was expecting to see more wet pants, but then again everything in MENA dries right away. Same with toto style bidets though, but I've mostly seen them in fancy establishments and assume someone is doing the frequent upkeep.

[2dvisio]

Or commonly referred to as “bum guns” in the UK. We have three toilets in our house and have one in each. They’re so good I can’t even explain. I find it so inconvenient whenever I travel that these don’t come with every toilet.

[raincom]

Those hand sprayer versions are bad to use and unhygienic too, because fecal matter gets sprayed beyond the toilet bowl. I know why Arabic countries prefer hand sprayer versions: istinja practices of Islam.

[everybodyknows]

Not with the one I bought at Home Depot. Two valves: one with a longish lever at the bottom of the tank, one in the sprayer, one at the wand. Use the first lever as high-precision pressure control, the one at the wand as a quick cutoff or not at all.

Adjust pressure to a 3-4 inch high fountain. No overspray.

Angle the flow forward, to minimize drip-back onto the sprayer head.

[raincom]

I have been using Neo180 manual bidet for 5 years, which I bought for Amazon. Replaced it last year with the same model. I don't like manual handheld sprayer bidets, which are popular in the Middle East; later, they spread to SE Asia, now South Asia, Russia.

[zdc1]

They are also very, very cheap to install and replace (US$1 or less in low cost of living countries). So for some it's better-than-nothing.

[swat535]

They are also installed in all houses in Iran. I think many places in middle east has them. Toilet paper usage is not a thing there.

[seb1204]

No concern really in my experience. This point is often raised by the uninitiated.

[raincom]

I used it in Indian hotels. Sure, one should get 30 day practical course on how to use bidet spray without wetting the whole restroom, without spraying junk around. If that is what initiation is, it is a failure in my considered opinion.

[al_borland]

How does one get initiated? They had the hand sprayers at my office in India. I never tried. Experimenting with that and having to go back to work seemed like a bad idea. I also didn’t feel like asking co-workers how to use their toilets.

[latentsea]

I guess one gets initiated by doing toilet training.

[viksit]

this is also the most common thing in india fwiw so it’s not all religious.

[raincom]

Well, Indians have learned this technology from abroad--mostly Middle East, thats where many Indians work. Of course, now Indian companies make those sprayer bidets.

[saagarjha]

People have been using water to clean themselves for hundreds if not thousands of years.

[raincom]

Squat toils + bidet attachment is better than squat toilet and a jug for water. No dispute about that. Sit down toilet + hand held bidet attachment is worse than sit down toilet + bidet inside in the toilet without using hand. My answer was about sit down toilet with hand held bidet attachments; how Indians discovered these hand held bidet attachments.

[scotty79]

> you grab the handheld sprayer and turn it upside down and reach behind you

Why not from the front? It makes way more sense. Easier to aim and your butt seals against the back edge of bowl hole so the water doesn't splash out.

[nhod]

Your butt does not do that. If you are relatively fit, there often is a butt crack gap on top of the bowl. Butt much worse, there is also a bigger gap between the seat and the bowl. If you go from the back there is more toilet bowl in front of you to error in.

[LoganDark]

Balls

[n1b0m]

This is the way to do it

[albrewer]

> People who have been doing this their whole lives can probably aim with a precision of a Marine Corp Sniper but to us

I bought these sprayers for my house when people lost their minds hoarding toilet paper during the initial COVID lockdowns in the US. It only took a few days to start getting it right the first time, every time.

[socalgal2]

Those hand sprayers are an Muslim thing aren't they? That's what I was told by locals in SE Asia. Searching, it comes up

[tazjin]

They're pretty common in Russia, too. In Muslim countries they're basically everywhere.

When you're used to them it's very annoying to end up in a country that doesn't have them. Especially the US, which in addition has strange toilets that fill up with a lot of water during normal operation and bathroom stall privacy that begins 30cm above the ground.

[socalgal2]

Agreed. USA public restrooms are the worst as are USA public restroom manners.

[someotherperson]

Not even close. Try to travel in Latin America or something and go to a bathroom. You won't find toilet paper or a toilet seat, or even free bathrooms in many cases.

[eloisant]

Well at least they're usually somewhat clean. Can't say the same of French public toilets.

[chgs]

The USA is the only country I’ve been to where you get massive gaps around the doors

[mtalantikite]

Not always — I was pretty surprised they didn’t have them in every bathroom when visiting Morocco. My family is Algerian and they’re standard there, and I always assumed it would be common in other Muslim countries considering how much emphasis there is on cleanliness, but I didn’t encounter a single one the entire time I was in Morocco, across four cities.

[halpow]

No, they're everywhere in Thailand, Vietnam and Philippines, none of which are majority muslims.

[socalgal2]

that doesn't make them non-muslim things. Plently of things in those countries that are not from those countries

[illiac786]

I feel it’s weird defining them by the main religion of the country it is (maybe) mostly used. No one says the numbers used in English are Muslim, they are generally referred to as Arabic.

I wouldn’t say printing is a “catholic thing”, but it definitely came from a super catholic part of the world.

[erklik]

I think it makes sense specifically in this case.

Mainly because Islam has jurisprudence around hygiene in a sense. Ritual purification is an actual religious principle.

Islam requires Muslims to pray 5 times a day, and for those prayers, one has to be ritually clean. That involves washing the hands, rinsing the mouth and nose, washing the face, forearms, head, ears, and then the feet. That's effectively all the major parts of the body that are generally not covered by clothes. Your "cleanliness" is invalided if you use the toilet, pass flatulence, vomit, sleep and so on.

More so, for using the toilet, there are rules. You have to find a place that is away from standing water, people's pathways, shade etc ; granted, this generally doesn't apply in today's age. You have to be quiet on the toilet, and not look at anyone. Not allowed to eat any food while defecating. Lastly and most relevant in this case, you have to use water to wash yourself using the left hand, and then afterwards, you need to do the same for washing the front if you've urinated.

The reason why the "bidet spray" thing exists, is largely because of the rules in the religion around that practice. Calling them Arabic wouldn't make any sense because Indonesia, with the largest Muslim population, has similar tools in their facilities. Again, because they're mostly Muslims.

Printing isn't a catholic thing because the religious doctrine didn't emphasis "printing" itself.

Arabic numbers aren't "islamic numbers" because the religious doctrine didn't emphasise the numbers in some way.

[radlad]

> After defecating, the anus must be washed with water using the left hand, or an odd number of smooth stones or pebbles called jamrah or hijaarah (Sahih Al-Bukhari 161, Book 4, Hadith 27).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_toilet_etiquette

[illiac786]

The Talmudic requirements say to wash your hands after going to the bathroom.

Is it a Jew thing because of that?

[halpow]

Coffee is a Muslim thing then. How do you feel about that?

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Could you do like Italians do with bidet?

Aim the sprayer down into the toilet, let the water go on your dominant hand (hold the washer without the dominant), so no water gets out, use the hand with soap to put soap/water on your anus, wash kinda like you would do when washing the body except you repeatedly rinse the hand in the water and bring more water to the anus.

Done

I used a Japanese style bidet and managed to ruin a painting, because the spray crossed through a door slightly open and into the wall on the other side, with a painting on it. A funny event actually

[throw0101b]

> I was curious what it was for so I YouTube'd and searched for instructions on what the soap dispenser was for and (kind-of) to my surprise it was soap to lather and clean your anus with your other free hand. After you lather and clean, you basically rinse your hand with the hose as well.

There seems to be two kinds of cultures in the world: those that use water / their hands for post-business cleansing, and those that use paper or some other medium.

* https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191004-the-peculiar-bat...

* https://www.sterillium.info/en/stories-hub/hygiene-customs-a...

For the hands folks, you then need to clean one's hands:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lota_(vessel)#Cleansing

* https://www.pocketbidet.com/blogs/our-blog/what-is-a-lota-a-...

* https://hellotushy.com/blogs/bidets/what-is-a-lota-muslim-hy...

[jfoster]

In Thailand anywhere luxury will typically use the Japanese style washlets. I wouldn't be surprised to see that trickle-down to eventually become standard.

[FabHK]

Some of the more upmarket shopping malls in Bangkok have Totos.

[michaelsbradley]

After experiencing these hand sprayers during international travel, I installed them next to all of the toilets in our house. My wife grew up with something similar but had done without since living in the US, and hadn’t thought to suggest them to me. My Asian in-laws were/are happy about it, and our household toilet paper usage has plummeted.

[aatd86]

computer vision will solve this and direct the waterjet in yer bullseye. :D

ai...ai everywhere.

[jfoster]

You probably don't want a bullseye. Many of the ones in Japan will actually move the spray around a bit if you press the おしり button twice.

[stavros]

I'm a scrub with a $20 bidet accessory and I move my butt around, so I agree: you want more coverage than just a bullseye .

[dzhiurgis]

About to do that right now. Life without it is unimaginable.

[bryanrasmussen]

skynet becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th, realizing it is being used primarily for cleaning fecal matter off human anuses, it uses its enhanced systems clearance in Pentagon to start global thermonuclear war.

[dataviz1000]

They could have purposed the robots to pass the butter but, no, they wanted bombs not butter.

[eastbound]

Anyone to volunteer to feed image categorization for AI? PTSD might be severe and tenure shorter than at Facebook.

[j-a-a-p]

There is probably somebody on HN who's tasks is to train this neural network right now.

[DonHopkins]

It's been done, but there are legal and ethical issues with photographing children's buttholes.

Scientists Working on Toilet That Identifies You by Your Butthole Many users "wouldn’t, for very good reasons, like cameras pointing up their bottoms.":

https://futurism.com/neoscope/scientists-toilet-identifies-b...

Anal-genital viewing device and method:

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20110083264A1/en

A Very Suggestive Toilet | Alpine Shepherd Boy | Better Call Saul:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR1m29cNVsc

[blitzar]

should use lidar instead of vision

[seanmcdirmid]

It’s not like Japanese toilets don’t have a lot of tech in them already. A sprayer that sprays only in the right place seems very feasible.

[dzhiurgis]

You just position your area of interest over where the stream is (if you don’t like massage feature)

[anjel]

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

[whycome]

Or a camera. Thats what they do on the international space station to help the astronauts “aim”

[seb1204]

Also very common in Finland.

[yubblegum]

Simple instructions:

1 - wipe with tissue

2 - wash with water. Traditionally, use left hand.

3 - dry hand with tissue.

4 - flush

5 - wash hands at sink

[apwell23]

tissue paper is not designed for drying water

[polygloty]

If you get from up and behind all risks are eliminated. You have to tilt forward a bit but everything else becomes easier

[elevaet]

These are almost universal in Indonesia too

[rayiner]

What’s weird about it. I assume you do clean down there with soap periodically … right?

[mulmen]

Yes but typically I’m not wearing clothes when I do that.

[fallinghawks]

When you're doing your business I hope your pants are down

[laristine]

It's also good practice to always clean thoroughly with soap after each toilet session, except where it's impossible like a public restroom.

[halpow]

Public restrooms in Asia have bidets, so it's generally possible there too, assuming, you BYO soap.

[DonHopkins]

After you only wipe with paper, you're literally wearing shit the rest of the day. Barbaric!

[0x073]

Dont use soap down there. Water is enough normally.

[caseyohara]

Dont use soap on my hands. Water is enough normally.

[0x073]

You know that these are different areas with different skin types.

But yes too much soap on hands can also be bad.

[saagarjha]

I assure you that using soap once a day is not too much for that skin type.

[bmacho]

Works On My Ass

[krispyfi]

Remind me to never toss your salad

[olivierestsage]

This is a candidate for one of the all-time greatest HackerNews comments, IMO

[Gud]

You don't use these the first time at an airport, is my advice.

[apwell23]

I have a question for bidet users. After you powerwash your anus, do you have a towel nearby to wipeoff ?

In india you can just put your clothes on after powerwash because it so hot and dries fast. I am guessing you don't want that in chicago winter.

[retrochameleon]

No, I just use (literally) 1-2 square of toilet paper. That's all that's needed to dry off. Because of the incredibly low TP usage, I splurge on nicer TP since having a bidet. A single large pack of TP can easily last many many months, if not an entire year.

[tguvot]

Proper bidet has dryer fan

[tambeb]

Very common in the Middle East too.

[martin-t]

Off-topic but can we please stop censoring words such as shitting?

It disgusts me but at least I understand it on platforms like YouTube which penalize those who don't self-censor but it has no purpose here.

I find it worrying how easily people accept this newspeak and spread it of their own free will.

[Freak_NL]

Or use 'pooping' or 'defecating'.

It never ceases to amaze me people do that without any prompting. Why? What is gained? We are meat puppets who occasionally shit, piss, fuck, bleed, and die. Use a thesaurus if you must, but leave the asterisks out of it.

[viraptor]

It also became a weird cargo cult thing. Only one platform had issues with killing, but now videos everywhere are captioned with unaliving. We can say shit and ass!