Water-free Urinals in Japan

The Japanese always have the most funky toilet, and the Nankai Electric Railway Co. is going to up the ante by offering water-free urinals at 18 men’s toilets in stations along its lines. Before you start to wrinkle your nose in disgust, check out the main reason for this seemingly unhygienic move. For starters, how does saving 22,000 tons of water and about 6 million yen in utility bills sound to you? These upgraded urinals won’t stink either, since they are covered in a low friction material that ensures condensation does not build up on them, doing away with the need to flush after use. After all, urine will be deposited into special cartridges which help reduce odors. It will take a mental paradigm shift to accept this idea, but it looks like it will work for me. I wonder if they have made provisions for people who love spitting their phelgm into urinals…