#2: Hatagaya

"...With Toilet"

Location #2 is at 3-37-8 Hatagaya, Shibuya. It faces out across an intersection from its northeast corner.

Its director, Miles Pennington, is now a professor of Design Led Innovation and director of an international innovation laboratory at the University of Tokyo. He observed that public toilets often become underused, people don't use them, don't even think of them, and are neglected.

He wrote:
"To try and reverse that trend we created ‘...With Toilet’. It is a public toilet combined with an additional functional space which can be used for various purposes by everyone. We hope that it will be used as an exhibition space, pop-up kiosk, small information center or a cozy meeting space, and become the center of the local community."

This event space has a ceiling about five meters high and opens onto an open space between the toilet and the sidewalks. A row of plantings partially divides the open event area from the sidewalk. The event space is softly illuminated through the night.

Visiting the Toilet

Looking diagonally across the intersection, you can see how the facility could provide a nice venue for the neighborhood.

As I started to cross the second street to reach the toilet, I saw that I was going to have to wait for a moment. A fire truck was coming!

This one was a ladder truck, and I heard a second one approaching. The ladder truck was preparing to turn right, to the south.

Soon after it cleared the intersection, the second truck passed through the intersection from north to south.

With the extra water-related excitement over, I turned to explore the Hatagaya Public Toilet.

The floor plan shows that the open venue space is about half of the area. There are two universal toilets, usable by men and women, including ostomates. There's a men's only room with just two urinals and a sink.

The standard pictograms show the uses of the universal rooms.

The venue space uses a combination of natural lighting and controllable overhead lighting.

I was surprised to see a discarded drink container in this public toilet, and also in one near Shibuya Crossing. That second one is in an area with a lot of visitors, including many western ones.

It's astonishing to me how litter is almost non-existent in Japan, especially since there are so few trash receptacles.

Related to litter and waste reduction, you won't see paper towel dispensers in these public toilets. Nor do you generally see them in Japan. The "hand dip" blow driers are fairly common.

All of the Tokyo Toilet locations use Washlet toilets with built-in seat heating and bidet functions.

These use an array of metal buttons for the control panel.

Moving on to the next location

Here is a walking route joining locations #01, #02, #03, and #04. The ends of the route are at Sasazuka Station and near Hatagaya Station, respectively KO 04 and KO 03 on the Keiō New Line a short distance west of Shinjuku Station.