I would venture to bet that the vast majority of Americans have never had the opportunity to try a bidet, and wouldnt know how to use one or what to expect if they did. I know I haven't.
I think this is an education problem. And articles like this only serve to highlight the problem, not solve it.
In ignorance, spraying water at feces on a rear, especially with no way to aim things before hand, leads me to expect a mess being sprayed around the bowl at least, and outside the bowl if you don't have a good seal. Aerosolizing feces is already a problem with the flush, now we are splashing it around? And I assume you still need to use TP to wipe up, but anyone who has used toilet paper around water knows how ineffective it is at drying things.
I'm sure im wrong and theres good answers to all of these concerns - ive heard many proclamations of my savagery at not using a bidet over the years, but ive never seen these things addressed. Find a way to tell people how they actually work and I bet you would see a lot more movement. Put them in hotels or other places where people have a chance to give them a try.
The aiming problem is solved within 1-2 times of using it. You get used to where to put your butt, even if you can't move the nozzle.
Aerosolizing isn't a big deal because your butt is on the seat. It's nothing like the flush.
Finally, the TP that you use to dry is still quite a bit less than what you use to wipe. And it's so much easier on the skin down there - I'm currently staying at a place without a bidet, and it definitely adds to the discomfort around the day. It's something you don't know is an irritant until it returns.
These are essentially telephone showers installed next to the toilet. You switch them on using a valve/trigger and then manually direct the fire. Simple, cheap, no fuss.
This little guy, however, turned out to be a closet fire hose. It pretty much went from 0 to 1000 gallons per sec in an instant and just wouldn't let up. The valve was stuck. The extension hose was twisting and coiling around like crazy with the pressure released. The shower head was going full blast in my hand, initially directed at my rear, it was continuously pushing my hand away from anything that I was trying to point it to. It give me a visceral understanding of how jet engines work.
Working out a sequence of operations in my head to get out of such a situation while caught in a compromised and inflexible position, with only one hand free, was quite a challenge. I am not quite sure if I should be thankful that it wasnt autonomously powered and directed.
My first Japanese toilet experience happened @ Google (I was interning there at that time). When the water touched the derriere, it made me flinch and jump with surprise, as I wasnt quite sure what to expect, this was several years ago and Japanese toilets were still an unfamiliar object to me. And it really tickles the shit out of you ! (no pun intended)
There are ways to choose between a laminar and degrees of non-laminar, to full-on turbulent flow (all those controls must be for something), I would expect the former to be somewhat less flinch inducing.
Pretty much this. The lack of bidet being common makes me not want to travel anymore, thats how big a benefit a bidet is. No matter how much tp you use your butt will have a tiny bit of poop smear on it until you shower and the difference in comfort is gigantic once you experience the difference (side note the best bidets are the cheap ones that dont heat and blast you at up to full pressure. The super expensive japanese one both dont have enough pressure for all situations and have features that pamper without helping.
So things might vary from bidet/setup, but at least for my own experience with a Luxe Neo 320:
Aiming really isn't a problem. For one, the water doesn't just come on at full blast, the control allows you to bring it up from off. It takes a few days to figure out where you setup is aimed and know how to position yourself there, and from that point on it's basically not a concern. Other fancier ones might have aiming capabilities that don't require you to move, I haven't found it to be something I feel I need, YMMV. Beyond that, you're sitting over everything and they aren't generally aiming far forward, so even if you miss at full blast, it's just going to hit you somewhere else.
After a few years of this, the only mess outside the bowl that has ever occurred was when the dog turned it on with no one on the seat (so to that end, put the lid down).
As for aerosolizing, not sure that there's been any particular studies but just speaking from a use perspective, again you're sitting over things keeping a lid on it as it were. The stream isn't exactly a pressure wash level of power (or at least, you can tune the stream to not be if you had really high water pressure) and if you were to imagine the effect of spraying a hose into a loose canvas awning hanging above you, that's generally how things happen. Lots of water sheeting of more or less straight down with a bit going to the side and down. A little wiggling about (again, since the Neo doesn't have any functionality to aim the nozzle) and you clean up even around the sides just fine and I would venture little is aerosolized and what little has been is largely contained in the same way having your lid down contains from flushes.
Yes, you still want to use a few squares of TP to dry up at the end, but if you sit for a few seconds, you'll drip dry most of the way, and 3-5 squares to pat dry is considerably less than used otherwise.
In Italy the bidet is not used like in Japan, it's essentially like a hand sink, but for your butt.
Wipe once with toilet paper (while on the toilet), then proceed to sit on the bidet.
The water is not meant to flow on your butt, it's for your hands. Put soap on your hand (only one is needed), grab some water while sitting on the bidet, wash your butt as you would wash your hands, rinse with the running water, dry your butt with a towel, wash the bidet if necessary, go to the sink and wash your hands.
No poop in the air, no aiming challenge. It takes a bit of getting used to clean your butt without watching it.
Oh wow. I made an account just to address the misdirection in your comment.
1) "especially with no way to aim things before hand"
- The precision and accuracy of the water stream is extremely high. On less sophisticated models, which can be had at local hardware stores and Amazon in the US for less than $50, you "aim" by adjusting your seated position. In other words, you bring your @* to the water stream. This sounds like more of a chore than it really is. It's a game of inches, not feet. More expensive models have some range parameters that can be changed for front and rear washing preferences.
2) "leads me to expect a mess being sprayed around the bowl"
Practically speaking this has not been an issue for me.
3) "outside the bowl if you don't have a good seal"
???
You are seated on the toilet seat. Unless you weigh considerably less than me, I'm not sure how you wouldn't have a seal.
4) "Aerosolizing feces is already a problem with the flush, now we are splashing it around?"
This is an interesting point, and one that I had not really considered. I am not aware of any studies in the literature (and I suspect it would be a bit of a red flag about myself if I were) that looked specifically at aerosolization during the actual act of using the bidet. However, a cursory search did yield a few studies that looked at bacterial colonization of the nozzle. This can be concerningly high in a shared use toilet, though the limited amount of studies are not in good agreement here. Iyo et al. (2016) found Pseudomonas aeruginosa on 2% of bidet toilets in a restroom on a university campus; a different study noted that in a university hospital, 34% (n = 10) of bidet nozzles contained isolated of Staphylococcus aureus (Katsuse et al. 2017). Tsunoda et al. (2019) found that there was an 87% colonization rate of bacteria (all species) in hospital toilets with bidets.
My follow up question would perhaps be "so what?" when you consider the issue in the frame of a personal toilet (rather than a toilet in a hospital), which might be shared with your family members and, more rarely, friends. I personally consider it a negligible risk in the grand scheme of microbial activity to which I am exposed elsewhere. I do take the nozzle cleanliness seriously, and I make it a point to clean the nozzle with a bleach-based toilet bowl cleaner.
That said, I agree with you that this is a relative unknown and one about which I would like to know more.
5) "And I assume you still need to use TP to wipe up, but anyone who has used toilet paper around water knows how ineffective it is at drying things."
You do need to do this. Anything more than single-ply is up to the task. I have never had an issue with ineffective drying. Sometimes I only need to use 1-2 squares.
6) "Find a way to tell people how they actually work"
They shoot a stream of water up your butt. This is conceptually simple enough (and logical, to boot: I'm sure everyone here is well aware of the common argument for bidets that water cleans better than paper). I personally think the bigger issue is that people are uncomfortable with the idea of something going up their butt, not that they don't understand the answers to the questions you've posed.
7) "Put them in hotels"
I have seen them at a hotel in Hawaii, but this was due to Japanese influence. I do not think that most hotels would take on the investment in order to be the harbinger of change in this country. It might cut down on their TP costs, but they buy (horrible quality) rolls for pennies on the dollar.
Bonus: I recommend watching the South Park episode wherein Randy buys a bidet, for further (albeit fictional) testimonial to their greatness.
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References:
Iyo, T., Asakura, K., Nakano, M., Yamada, M. and Omae, K. (2016) Bidet toilet seats with warm-water tanks: residual chlorine, microbial community, and structural analyses.
J Water Health 14, 68–80.
Katsuse, A.K., Takahashi, H., Yoshizawa, S., Tateda, K., Nakanishi, Y., Kaneko, A. and Kobayashi, I. (2017) Public health and healthcare-associated risk of electric, warmwater bidet toilets. J Hosp Infect 97, 296–300.
Tsunoda, A., Otsuka, Y., Toguchi, A., Watanabe, K., Nishino, R. and Takahashi, T. (2019) Survey on bacteria contamination of bidet toilets and relation to the interval
of scrubbing these units. J Water Health 17, 863–869.
Abney, S. E., Bright, K. R., McKinney, J., Ijaz, M. K., & Gerba, C. P. (2021). Toilet hygiene—review and research needs. Journal of Applied Microbiology, 131(6), 2705-2714.
Once you've gotten used to using flowing water to clean yourself, going back to a place where there are no bidets (or equivalent middle-east style handheld toilet shower) and you can use toilet paper only feels like the grossest/nastiest thing.
I heard someone explain it like this: "Imagine you got some shit on your hand, how would you clean it? Well you'd go to a sink and wash it off with soap and water, you wouldn't just wipe it off with some paper towels. Ok, so why do we do that with our asses?"
Perhaps not, but without a bidet you're probably smearing it on your undergarments every time you sit, which have a tendency to aspirate the smell of fecal matter a little every time you sit, walk, etc.
Over years, how much of it is accruing on your office chair? The fabric of your sofa?
If you leave that amount of fecal matter on your arse, then obviously it will smell bad and be unhygienic. My pants usually don't smell at all at the end of the day when I go shower.
> Over years, how much of it is accruing on your office chair? The fabric of your sofa?
Probably nothing or very close to it. There's usually 2 layers of fabric between the tiny amount left and the chair or sofa.
TMy office chair of 10 years that I recently replaced because it broke had a discolouration on the headrest from smearing my head on it. The seat was pretty much pristine. My sofa doesn't smell at all after many years of use and has no weird colours.
Your response ignores the fact that if you got shit anywhere else on your body (e.g., your elbow or your back), you'd likely use soap and water anyway, even if you don't touch your elbow to your face, door handles, etc.
Also, the argument isn't necessarily about preventing something bad from happening, it's also about just feeling clean. People who have not tried a bidet cannot really say whether they would feel better/cleaner with TP or a bidet. It's like if you tried to explain to someone who has only ever used wet wipes to bathe that a shower makes you feel better. Sure, wet wipes may objectively clean you but those who have used a shower can speak to the subjective benefits of feeling nicer.
The counterargument that "TP works well enough" is not a very strong one to my mind, if there's something that works better with no real downside.
Your poop smells. You aren't getting it perfectly clean. Some people believe they don't have to clean the lower half of their body, which is equally crazy.
This, compounded with the rubbing agitation you're applying to such a sensitive area, over and over and over. Why do we do this to ourselves so unnecessarily?
Yeah so you go to the toilet in the morning, then you walk around the rest of the day smearing particles of feacal matter between your thighs and butt cheeks, messing up your underwear, smelling, irritating your skin. Hell, what happens if you go for a run after, sweaty ass combined with faecal matter and that sweat then running down your legs. Lovely stuff!
I always found this argument underwhelming. Using a bidet isn't the equivalent of washing your hands with soap and water as we generally do, it's the equivalent of holding your hand under the faucet. You don't get the soap or the scrubbing which are pretty important parts of hand washing.
That said, I have liked my experience with bidets.
You're not using a bidet right! You should wash your ass the same way you wash your hands, you turn on the bidet and then use one hand (or two) to wash your ass properly. You don't just turn on the water and wait for a while.
I need a god damned lesson on this. I just don't get it. It's not like the bidet is a precise instrument. It does a half-assed job (literally!), and everything winds up wet and half clean. I then break a bunch of toilet paper trying to get everything dry, meaning my hands -- which I use to touch things other people touch -- are at least until washed decided less clean. I've only tried these damned things a couple times, but I definitely do not get it.
Ok so tell me, I didn’t do research but might aswell sacrifice some dignity to get some answer for a friend in here:
1. You spray water up the butt… how does one prevent everything, including underwear, from getting wet?
2. What takes the dirt away eventually? A clean towel? The force of the water? Where is it taken? With the spraying water? Into the laundry machine?
I’m sure there is some excellent YouTube material that answers all my dumb wiper questions, if so please link it here for me and the other people stuck in the past. I feel like I don’t understand the 3 seashells…
I own the hand-held variant (IIRC the https://snapklik.com/en-ca/product/sontiy-brass-handheld-bid...). Think of it as a (very) specialized hand-held shower that's connected to (and easily within reach of someone sitting on) my toilet. Close friends of mine have a washlet integrated system that I've used before.
I also happen to be a guy, so what I'm about to say applies only to my #2 process -- so no direct experience with ladies' #1 or any concern about cross-contamination by water running to the frontal anatomy (though my research back then mentioned that shouldn't be a bigger concern than without these items).
1. Within a few attempts you get very good at aiming (blind) and keeping only the inside of your bum cheeks wet. With the handheld want it's "all in the wrist", with the integrated system you get to do a silly little hip dance for 5 seconds and move on your with life.
2. It immediately joins and is flushed with the rest of your deposit. I do dry my cheeks with the boaty towels, and find it particularly pleasant and clean, at least comparatively to the previous decades of my life. So "with the spraying water?" yes, overwhelmingly, and "into the laundry machine?" trace amounts for sure, but emphasis on trace amounts.
Hope this helps, I'm also a _fanatical convert_ of this new process.
Imagine a vertical cross-section of a person sitting on the toilet seat. The rear end is not only obstructing the flow of water out of the toilet, but it extends below the lip of the seat vertically so any extra water falls downwards into the toilet. The only time water escapes is if you absentmindedly stand up without turning off the bidet[0].
As it turns out, the water is quite effective at removing the dirt. At first I was worried it would disperse it and I'd be wiping a larger region, but in fact it's easy to quickly confirm with the white toilet paper that virtually zero waste is left remaining after only a few seconds of running the bidet.
[0] This depends on the model, some Europeon models I have encountered are configured as a completely separate "bowl" and they spray aerated water with such low force that the water would never leave the bowl, whether a body is present or not.
1. Water is a focused stream and I still use a small amount of toilet paper afterwards. You shouldn’t be dripping wet.
2. The water takes away (into the toilet bowl) all the soil if done right, and the small toilet paper is mostly just for drying. But you’re still using the toilet paper.
Maybe there is a body type / layout difference? It feels incredibly straightforward to me but reading the comments you are definitely not alone. My suggestion would be to just try it a couple of times.
1. You spray water up the butt… how does one prevent everything, including underwear, from getting wet?
You are seated... your underwear is around your ankles. You aren't standing straight up after.
2. What takes the dirt away eventually? A clean towel? The force of the water? Where is it taken? With the spraying water? Into the laundry machine?
The force of the water removes it. It falls down into the toilet. It's literally just like an upward-facing hose - it sprays water. You maneuver your butt over the stream. It cleans in the same way a shower sprays water, or a hose sprays water, to wash away material. You then can either use a little toilet paper to dry yourself, or use the air dryer that comes on a fancier bidet.
Bidets are like acid: people who try it once have to tell everyone to try it too. Personally, I find the fixation on how I'm supposed to clean my ass a bit weird.
I mean this is an article about bidets. It's sort of expected that people will share their thoughts and experiences. Outside of contexts like this the totality of my discussions about bidets has been essentially entirely limited to with the friend who helped me remove my old toilet and install my new bidet one.
Mine has an integrated blow dryer, and I usually follow up with a bit of TP to clear up any remaining moisture. Even without a dryers it's not that much water. A few seconds to drop dry and TP will be sufficient.
You use like 2 squares of toilet paper to dry yourself instead of the many more it takes a man to get not nearly as clean. It's more about actual cleanliness - you wipe yourself and there's no poop, instead of residual poop forever.
If you don't have access to a bidet, just use the "dab of lotion on the TP" technique.
Wipe like normal. Then put a bit of lotion on new folded TP and wipe. Repeat a few times until the TP is completely clean. It's not at the level of bidet, but it gets you pretty squeaky clean (try it).
Best is to use thicker lotion with enough "slipperyness", like true cocoa butter, etc. Cheaper lotions generally don't work as well. Keep a small tube of the lotion in your backpack if you need it when you're out and about.
(Fun fact: I submitted this technique as part of my YC application years ago and PG mentioned it to me when I ran into him at Stanford)
I introduced my landlord to bidet when I asked his permission and he liked it so much that he got several of them for other tenants (as a perk) and family members. It is a single life improvement that really helps me navigating. I work from home because the university wouldn't agree on installing it in my department building.
For those who got addicted to a flowing-water toilet shower and now can't (or don't want to) take a dump on a public restroom, don't worry, us Germans got y'all covered with the portable butt cleanser [1].
I'm convinced we'd all be using bidets if it didn't have the fancy sounding name. If it was introduced as something like the Ass-Blaster 5000™ it would be in every home.
There do seem to be plenty of odd reactions and a strange inability to figure out how it works from even the most brief of observations plus some obvious principles.
I suppose it wouldn't be wise to get onto the similarly odd beliefs around hard driers, which many seem to believe blow concerning amounts of faeces around public conveniences!
I always had one (likely stupid) question regarding these as I don‘t own one but would very much like an improvement over the paper, so now is the time to ask the experts:
Are you supposed to additionally use a hand while the water runs or is the water pressure sufficient to get completely clean?
My personal experience (with a Luxe Neo 320, so not a fancy thing) is that water pressure is sufficient for 99%. If you've had a particularly bad day, a little TP after finishes the job.
After living with a bidet, it’s really hard to go back. I don’t know why America doesn’t make it standard, especially new homes. You need to run an electrical line to the toilet though which most American bathrooms don’t have.
I recommend just getting one of the no-frills affordable unpowered $40 bidets on Amazon. The idea of the water not being warm sounds much worse than it actually is, and after just a couple uses you hardly even realize the water isn't heated.
Agreed. I have both types and they are both fine. The one with heated water and a heated seat and different spray options is obviously nicer but the Amazon special does just as good of a job getting me clean for much less money.
Personally, I think an upgrade to something in $100 range is worthwhile. I've got an original Tushy (cold-water) model that is easier to control the flow. The cheaper Amazon models tend to be either off or a sharply aimed firehose at least with my water pressure.
Not just an electrical line. In a lot of new homes, they put it on its own circuit. The nicer models have tankless water heaters in them and can pull >12 amps on their own. That'll trip a breaker for sure if you've got any other high load on the same circuit (e.g. hair straightener, hair dryer).
We were thinking about a fancy Japanese setup (heated toilet seat, warmed water used to clean), but our toilet room isn't wired at all. It is a bit too cold where we are to consider an unheated solution.
In the US at least, it would be a rare toilet location that doesn't have hot water within reasonable range. Even places I've been where the toilet and sink are in separate rooms, it's usually separated by a single interior wall, not a huge hurdle to overcome.
Our house was built with separate toilet rooms, which is why we bought it (wife is Asian). Anyways, if we did this, we would just rewire and re-plumb the bathroom in a huge renovation.
If you had a wookie costume and there was peanut butter spread all over it, which would be more effective:
A. wiping it off with toilet paper
B. hosing the costume off
I have a bidet; when I travel I bring a cheap portable bidet with me. If you are undecided about getting one installed on your toilet and having a plumber hook it up to your water line etc, you could try this one [0] for pretty cheap. It's a bit low pressure compared to the one I have installed, and it doesn't heat up the water at all, but it's still infinitely better than the alternative.
"Flushable" wet wipes are still terrible for the sewer system and honestly that is misleading marketing. They still get stuck in municipal systems and anyone that runs such a system would tell you that these shouldn't be labeled so.
That is true. We had an outlet in all of our bathrooms (U.S.) — just not in a convenient location. So until I did bathroom remodels in each bathrooms (and made sure to put an outlet near the toilet), I had to use an extension cord.
They don’t always require electricity. I heard expats in Bali refer to the popular style there as the “bum gun”, which is basically like the extendable faucet in your kitchen sink, but for your butt. Just needs water pressure.
you can also get handheld bidet spray guns that are installed next to the toilet and are popular in asia particularly. A bit more awkward to handle manually (easily to spray out of the bowl), arguably, but also doubles as a cleaning sprayer.
One of the arguments I’ve heard is that it is unsanitary. It makes no sense to me because the argument I have is that, if you accidentally tripped, fell in poo and got some on your face, would you feel comfortable wiping it with a napkin and walk around for the rest of the day? Or would you wash your face with soap?
But most bidets don't use soap? Such that I don't really know that this is at all comparable?
I'll also note that appeals to "did you fall in poo" are farcical and somewhat ignore the fact that most people don't bathe/shower every day. A practice that is surprisingly common in the US. (I gave a quick attempt to see these stats across all nations. Didn't find anything that looked good for comparisons.)
I'm personally not opposed to bidets. I also don't know that I expect to see a lot of benefit, though? Would love to know why our poo habits require so much more work than most animals seem to require.
> Would love to know why our poo habits require so much more work than most animals seem to require.
I can't speak for all animals, but at least for the dogs and cats that have been in my life, I suspect a large part of it is that we can't / don't lick our own butts (and even if we could... I suspect we'd prefer the extra work)
I mean, they certainly clean in that way. But that is more comparable to bathing/showering for us. In general, my pets have to be sick if they are getting poo stuck to them. I can't think of many exceptions to that?
Even our long hair cats typically do not have feces stuck to them.
Most of the bidets--even super cheap basic ones--have a mode where they can flow water over the nozzle to clean it off. Regardless: if you shoot clean water through the nozzle you are momentarily maybe going to send dirty water at your already dirty body--so, no biggie--but then the water is going to run out of stuff to carry with it, and help clean you.
On the cheaper models, the nozzle is always there, so yeah it'll be another surface that needs to be cleaned.
On the more expensive models, the nozzle is in a separate chamber until it is being utilized, and has a separate mechanism for spraying / cleaning itself. That makes it a lot less of a cleaning burden.
Visiting Japan left me feeling spoiled. Every single place we went had a bidet. Every restaurant, bar, teahouse, mall, and the places we stayed overnight. The expensive restaurants had bidets that auto opened and auto flushed.
I have a bidet on all three toilets in my home, so it feels crappy (ha) to poop at a public restroom. It's just so unclean.
I think this is an education problem. And articles like this only serve to highlight the problem, not solve it.
In ignorance, spraying water at feces on a rear, especially with no way to aim things before hand, leads me to expect a mess being sprayed around the bowl at least, and outside the bowl if you don't have a good seal. Aerosolizing feces is already a problem with the flush, now we are splashing it around? And I assume you still need to use TP to wipe up, but anyone who has used toilet paper around water knows how ineffective it is at drying things.
I'm sure im wrong and theres good answers to all of these concerns - ive heard many proclamations of my savagery at not using a bidet over the years, but ive never seen these things addressed. Find a way to tell people how they actually work and I bet you would see a lot more movement. Put them in hotels or other places where people have a chance to give them a try.