It’s hard to imagine us Americans – fat, lazy, energy-hogging, wasteful Americans – responding in the same way as the Japanese have to a significant reduction in their capacity to generate electricity.
And the Japanese are clearly adept at making the obvious and correct decisions as to what they can do without – and what they can’t.
Sakuko Saeki, 75, said she had not only switched off but also unplugged her household appliances. She barely turned on the air-conditioning, instead using a fan in her living room. But there was one appliance she could not give up after all: an automatic toilet, called a washlet, the kind that flushes by itself, raises and lowers the lid on its own, and never ceases to amaze foreigners visiting Japan for the first time.
“I’d turned off my washlet,” Ms. Saeki said, “but I stopped doing that.”
You can take my Washlet when you pry it from my cold dead cheeks!
And what’s with the NYT not even mentioning the primary and most delightful function of the Washlet? It washes your ass (and your hoo-haw, if you’ve got one of those) with a refreshing and invigorating stream of warm water – and it is the crowning achievement of civilization. Talk about burying the lede…
from NY Times
It's a Complete Outrage 