The Japanese Transportation Ministry’s coveted “Japan Toilet Award” encourages major highway managers to be creative and generous in providing facilities to the traveling public. The New York Times last week had a feature about what the Nexco Central Nippon Expressway, which runs 200 rest stops, has done to win the award. One stop near Mount Fiji, which gets about 25,000 visitors on a busy weekend, has 72 stalls in the ladies’ room, and the men’s room has 14 stalls and 32 urinals. Each stall has a sensor, like parking spaces at some malls, that registers whether it’s in use — and flashes that info on an electronic board at the entrance. They even differentiate whether the stalls have western-style sitting toilets or traditional-style squatting style.
The ratio of women’s to men’s facilities, for a society still saddled with a sexist image, is amazing.