Guide · Akihabara

Part of: Japanese Etiquette: A First-Timer's Guide

Public Toilets in Japan: Where to Find One, and What All Those Buttons Do — From a Tokyo Guide Who Gets Asked This Every Week

Public toilets in Japan are everywhere, free, and usually clean — stations, convenience stores, department stores, parks and shopping centres all have them, and nobody expects you to buy anything first. The confusing part is the control panel. The flush is usually a lever, a sensor, or a button marked 流す, and the button you must never press casually is 呼出, which calls staff.

This is the question guests will not ask me until about hour two, when they have decided I am safe to ask. It is also the question that would have saved them the most anxiety on the flight over.

So: everything I would tell you before you needed it.

Where do I find a toilet in Tokyo?

Train stations, convenience stores, department stores, shopping malls, parks, museums and most large shops. They are free to use, they are signposted with pictograms rather than words, and using one without buying anything is completely normal. In practice you are rarely more than five minutes from one anywhere in central Tokyo.

Two things worth knowing. First, station toilets exist on both sides of the ticket gates, so if you have already tapped in you do not need to leave. Second, department store toilets are a genuine local secret — they are cleaned constantly, they usually have a seating area, and on the women's floors they often have a powder room attached.

At a convenience store, if you want to be polite about it, catch a staff member's eye and say toire, ii desu ka? (toilet, is it OK?). The answer is nearly always yes, and asking takes it from a favour to a courtesy.

Are they really free, and are they really clean?

Yes and mostly yes. Public toilets in Japan are free to use and are cleaned frequently, and the country treats public sanitation as a point of pride rather than an afterthought. Standards vary — an old park toilet is not a department store toilet — but the floor of expectation is far higher than most visitors are used to.

There is no coin slot, no attendant to tip, and no purchase requirement. Tokyo has even turned it into architecture: THE TOKYO TOILET project rebuilt seventeen public restrooms in Shibuya with sixteen well-known architects and designers, specifically so that anyone can find and use a toilet with confidence.

What varies is not cleanliness but equipment. Some have heated seats, warm water, a sound machine and a baby seat. Some are a hole in the floor and a tap. Both are normal, and you will meet both in the same afternoon.

What do all the buttons mean?

The panel is either on the wall beside you or on the arm of the seat. The bidet controls are the big cluster; the flush is usually separate. Learn four characters and you are fine: 流す is flush, 止 is stop, おしり is the rear spray, and 呼出 is the emergency call button. Newer panels in tourist areas and airports are labelled in English as well.

The bidet seat — the washlet, a TOTO product name from 1980 that became the generic word — is the thing visitors are most nervous about and most converted by. If you want to try it: sit down first. It only sprays when the seat sensor says someone is on it, which is a mercy the design engineers thought about before you did.

Which button is the flush, and which one calls staff?

The flush is the one marked 流す, or a lever on the side of the cistern, or a sensor panel you wave your hand over. The button marked 呼出 or 非常, usually red or orange and often larger, is the emergency call. Pressing it summons a staff member and, in some buildings, sets off an alarm outside the door.

This is the single most common toilet incident involving a visitor, and it is not a personal failure — the two buttons are sometimes on the same panel, in the same shape, a few centimetres apart. The design is bad. You are not.

How to avoid it: before anything else, find the flush. It is one of three things — a lever, a wall panel with 流す on it, or a small sensor square with a hand icon. If you genuinely cannot find one, wave your hand slowly across any panel-like surface behind or beside the seat, because a lot of them are motion sensors with no marking at all.

And if you do press the call button: nobody is angry. Open the door when they arrive, say sumimasen, machigaemashita (sorry, I made a mistake), and it is over. Staff in Japan deal with this weekly.

What if it's a squat toilet?

Squat toilets — washiki, 和式 — still exist in some older stations, parks and traditional restaurants, though they are a shrinking minority. You face the raised hooded end, not away from it. Feet either side, squat down, and keep your pockets empty. Most facilities that have them also have at least one Western-style stall, and the door usually has a pictogram showing which is which.

Practical notes that nobody puts in guides: put your bag on the hook rather than the floor, and empty your back pockets before you squat, because that is how phones end up where phones should not be. If you have knee problems, look for the stall marked with the seated pictogram or the multipurpose sign.

Is there toilet paper, and something to dry my hands?

Toilet paper is provided almost everywhere and it is designed to dissolve, so it goes in the bowl, not in the bin. Hand drying is the gap: many public toilets have no paper towels and no dryer, which is exactly why so many people here carry a small handkerchief. Buy one on day one for a few hundred yen.

The handkerchief is not a fashion item, it is infrastructure. Every convenience store, department store and station shop sells them, and once you have one in your pocket you will stop noticing the problem entirely.

A few related details:

• The bin in the stall is for sanitary products, not for paper. Paper goes down.
• Wet wipes do not go down, even the ones labelled flushable, and signs will say so.
• Soap is usually there, but not always in park toilets.
• The multipurpose stall (多目的トイレ / だれでもトイレ) has the space, the handrails and the baby seat, and it is for people who need it — wheelchair users, parents with small children, people with ostomies. Use a standard stall if you can.

What are the manners, beyond the mechanics?

Queue as a single line for the whole row of stalls rather than one line per door, keep phone calls out of the room entirely, never photograph anything, take your rubbish with you, and leave the stall as you found it. If there is a slipper mat at the entrance, change into the slippers — and change back out of them on the way out.

That last one catches almost every visitor once. In a traditional restaurant, a ryokan, or a private home, there are dedicated toilet slippers waiting inside the door, and walking back into the room still wearing them is the visible, faintly comic mistake everyone makes exactly once. Where you take your shoes off in Japan covers the whole slipper system, including this trap.

The no-photography rule is absolute and should not need saying, but the washlet panel is genuinely interesting and people do reach for the camera. Photograph one in a shop showroom instead. Photography etiquette in Japan covers where cameras are and are not welcome.

And the rubbish, as always, is yours to carry: there is generally no bin for anything but sanitary products. See why Japan has no bins.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to buy something to use a convenience store toilet? No. Customer toilets in convenience stores are open to anyone who asks, and staff will not check. Buying a drink on the way out is a nice thing to do rather than an obligation, and most regulars do it out of habit rather than guilt.

Are Japanese public toilets gender-separated? Usually yes, marked with the standard blue and red pictograms, plus a separate multipurpose stall. Some smaller or newer facilities are single-occupancy and unisex. The pictogram on the door is the authority — the words often are not translated.

Is there anywhere that charges for the toilet? Effectively no. Paid toilets are not a thing in Japan the way they are in parts of Europe. A very small number of premium station lounges charge for a shower or a rest space, which is a different product.

Why is there a sound machine in the stall? To mask the sounds of using the toilet, which some people find embarrassing enough that they were flushing repeatedly to cover them. The device — often branded Otohime, "sound princess" — was introduced partly as a water-saving measure. Press it or ignore it; both are normal.

What if I need a toilet urgently and there is no station nearby? Walk into the nearest convenience store, department store or large chain restaurant. None of them will turn you away, and none of them will ask why. This is a genuinely reliable safety net in Japanese cities and it is worth knowing before you need it.

Are there baby-changing facilities? Commonly, yes — in station and department store toilets, in multipurpose stalls, and increasingly in men's rooms as well as women's. Department stores and shopping malls are the reliable choice with a small child.

Learn the small stuff before you need it

Nothing on this page is difficult. It is just a list of things nobody tells you, that you find out alone, at the worst possible moment, on your first day. That is the entire problem my Tokyo First Day Tour: Japanese Manners & Survival Class exists to solve — a three-hour walking lesson on your first or second morning in Japan, using a real station, a real convenience store and a real restaurant, with a teacher next to you when the question comes up.

The full map of the rest: Japanese etiquette: a complete guide for first-time visitors.

About the author. I am Yuuki, a Japanese teacher and Akihabara tour guide in Tokyo. I run small-group tours in English most weeks, rated 4.96★ on Airbnb, and I have watched over 1,500 anime series — which is how most of my guests find me. I have pointed at the 流す button more times than I can count, and I will happily do it again.

See the Akihabara anime tour →

Sources: Japan National Tourism Organization, Beyond the Bidet: Japanese Toilets at the Forefront of Hygiene and Style — free public restrooms at stations and other venues, English-labelled panels at airports, squat toilets still found at some stations and older izakaya, TOTO's first Washlet in 1980, and THE TOKYO TOILET project's seventeen restrooms by sixteen architects and designers; Japan National Tourism Organization, Japanese Manners Do's and Don'ts; Japan National Tourism Organization, Custom & Manners.