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The story
News that “next-generation toilets” are being introduced to eliminate long lines for women’s restrooms sparked a reaction on 5ch. Some users defended the stall system by pointing to the complete lack of privacy at men’s urinals, while others floated radical alternatives like removing stall doors altogether — and more than a few admitted, “If I could be reborn, I’d rather be a man.”
[Outrage] “Being Born a Woman Is a Raw Deal!” The Government Finally Moves on the “Women’s Restroom Line Problem” — The Shocking System of the “Next-Gen Toilet” That Dramatically Cut Wait Times
Sat, 8/22, 14:00 JST
Yomiuri TV
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Common sense doesn't apply to Kansai people
Probably because it's Yomiuri TV (headquartered in Osaka)?
That way you could fit way more of them.
But even at men's urinals, nobody wants a "toilet neighbor," so people leave a gap between each other.
Factor in that space, and stalls with partitions in the women's room actually take up less room overall.
There's zero privacy.
Your junk is basically on full display.
Some station urinals have gotten so small they're basically see-everything territory.
There was one place with these oddly-shaped urinals scattered around with no partitions at all.
I walked right back out thinking, 'You want me to go in full view like this?'
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BkgnHUxCIAA8iBS.jpg
If I get reborn, I want to be a man.
Periods and childbirth are just too much of a hassle.
Maybe they should just invent some kind of strap-on urination device, like a packer?
Sounds like those already exist, but wouldn't you run into cleaning and drying issues every time you use one?
If you stared at the guy next to you like that, people would think you'd lost your mind.
I think they should do what they do in America and leave a big gap so feet are visible underneath.
What is wrong with them?
They're creatures that only think about themselves.
No concept of taking turns or hurrying along for others.
They also wrap toilet paper around their hand and waste a ton of it.
Setting aside whether that's even true, mind if I ask how you can state that so confidently…?
Officer, this is the guy (arrest this peeping creep).
We've got SDGs and LGBT rights now,
so just make it one shared room.
Newer buildings often do a half-shared setup already
like where only the very last stall is strictly women-only.
And women just do their makeup at the shared sink like it's nothing.
This'll solve it!
They already are.
I'm even good friends with a cat named Nyao-chan (a cutesy "meow-meow" name) — probably why I've gotten so good at the impression.
Background and Key Points
Japan’s public and commercial restrooms are almost universally sex-segregated, and a persistent complaint — long enough that it has its own shorthand, “joshi toire no gyouretsu” (women’s restroom queues) — is that women’s lines stretch out the door while men’s rooms sit empty. The structural reason, rarely stated outright by regulators or the press, is that many buildings historically allocate roughly equal floor space to men’s and women’s facilities under building codes, even though a stall visit simply takes longer per person than a urinal visit and women have no urinal option at all. This Yomiuri TV segment (a Kansai/Osaka-area broadcaster, hence the dialect that puzzled commenters at posts 5, 56, and 248) frames a “next-gen toilet” fix as a government intervention, though the thread itself never pins down what “next-gen” technically means beyond faster throughput.
The thread’s real fault line wasn’t over the fix itself but over fairness: several posters argued men already sacrifice privacy at open urinals, so equalizing conditions (shared rooms, partition-free stalls, standing devices for women) is the more consistent solution than simply adding capacity for women. Others pushed back that this framing shifts blame onto women’s restroom habits (phone use, tissue waste) rather than the underlying design imbalance.
What the thread misses is that this is a decades-old, well-documented infrastructure equity issue in Japan and elsewhere — not a new discovery — and that “next-gen toilet” here likely describes a queue-efficiency or stall-allocation tweak at a single facility, not a nationwide building-code mandate, despite the headline’s implication that “the government” is acting.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread “[Outrage] “Being Born a Woman Is a Raw Deal!” The Government Finally Moves on the Women’s Restroom Line Problem.”
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