yaschan wrote:
> read full story at:
> http://hanami.ath.cx/topstory15022006.html
> --
>
> It was late thursday evening when I wandered into one of those corner
> restaurants just next to Ueno railwaystation. I was about to meet my female
> associate. Once I went to the restroom and sat down in my thoughts, it
> struck me to hear womens voices in the washroom. "Gosh", I thought, I must
> have mistaken this to womens restroom. But no, I was in the right place. The
> toilet they had, was a unisex toilet. Just like in planes. The room where
> you can wash your hands, was shared, while women and men had their separate
> toilet rooms. The women cheerfully fixed their makeups and brushed their
> hair, when men checked their ties. Nothing strange there, as if it had been
> all natural for centuries! But what's behind all this?

Those types of restrooms are all over the place.  There's a public
restroom in Roppongi that has the urinals right out in plain view of
the sinks - all one common area.  I was taking a leak there once and
heard these high heels right walk in right behind me, fortunately it
was a woman :-)  (at least it looked like a woman)

What intrigues me about restrooms here are why so many mens rooms (not
uni-sex one) are of a design design such that their interiors are
visible from the outside.  It's probably just a cultural thing, but
sometimes it almost seems as if someone went out of their way to
intentionally design it that way.

-MB