Lifestyle

All articles

• Washlet — the Japanese warm-water bidet that quietly became standard

  Washlet is the warm-water bidet that washes you after — TOTO's invention, now near-universal on Japanese toilets.

• Japanese vending machines — four million quiet little statements about how safe the streets are

  Vending machines on every corner, full of cash, working all night long. The reason that works is the part most foreigners miss.

• Japanese trains — the rail system that runs to the second, in a country where on-time isn't a goal but a baseline

  Japanese trains run to the second. The interesting part is what an entire society does on top of that assumption.

• Pachinko — the Japanese vertical pinball-slot-machine that fills enormous parlors with deafening sound and small steel balls

  Japan's vertical pinball-slot machine — played in vast deafening parlors with cascading steel balls, in a legal gray zone.

• Kotatsu — the Japanese low table with a heater under it that quietly redesigned the entire winter

  A low table, a heater, a heavy blanket. The Japanese winter device that keeps the family warm — and gathered — in one square meter.

• Japanese convenience stores — the civic infrastructure that just happens to sell sandwiches

  Japan's convenience stores aren't really convenience stores — they're the country's everyday public infrastructure, awake at 3 AM, three minutes from anywhere.