#Tōtō-Museum

You’ll find the Tōtō Toilet Museum on the factory grounds at Tōtō’s headquarters in Kokura. Tōtō is the market leader for toilets and washlets in Japan. The name doesn’t actually come from the word toilet, but from their original company name Tōyō Tōki (Eastern Ceramics).

To kick things off, you get to watch an introductory film in English. After that, you can check out the company’s over 100-year history in the museum; they originally made tableware alongside sanitary ceramics. There’s loads to discover, from the sit-down toilet that Tōtō introduced to Japan, to the washlets, and even various other gadgets and oddities like the Toilet Bike. To finish up, you absolutely have to pay a visit to the museum’s own loo.

You can get to the museum from Kokura station on foot or by bus. Entry is free. You can use your own smartphone as an audio guide, and there’s free Wi-Fi available in the museum. Taking photos is mostly allowed. They only ask you not to take pictures of a few exhibits out of worry over industrial espionage. Naturally, we stuck to the rules.

The museum is really entertaining and well worth a little detour.

With brilliant weather today, we headed out to the neighbouring towns of Fukuoka. In Kokura we checked out a castle, but the real highlight was definitely the toilet museum run by Tōtō, Japan’s biggest toilet manufacturer. The whole topic of ceramic bowls is definitely worth its own article.

In the other direction is Dazaifu. The most famous spots there are the Tenman-gu shrine and the ruins of a former administration building (up to the end of the 12th century). At the little Chikuzen-Kokubun-ji temple, we got to take a quick peek into an area usually only accessible to priests, and outside of opening hours too.