There was a time when my husband wanted to work for the best toilet company in Japan—all he talked about was toilets. He talked to my dad about toilets, he talked to my friends about toilets, he talked to his teachers about toilets. He talked to me about toilets much more than I liked.

Toilets, toilets, toilets.

All this toilet talk rubbed off me. I’ve started examining toilets in each country—and I’ve come up with some pretty interesting differences between the bathrooms in America and Japan. So I wrote a post about why Japanese bathrooms are better than American bathrooms.

Bathroom slippers are exactly what they sound like: slippers in the bathroom. Most traditional restaurants, community centers, or Japanese schools will have these little plastic shoes for people to change into when they go inside the bathroom. This is supposed to keep the bathroom mess, well, in the bathroom.

Every time you flush the toilet, some of that “stuff” goes up in the air. And then there’s also that “splash zone” around the toilet that men can leave when they pee.

Bathroom slippers keep the place sanitary—so you don’t go tracking tiny bathroom particles throughout the house.

If you look closely, you can tell that the toilets in Japan have dual flush power. You can do a “weak flush” or a “strong flush” (use your own judgment).

It’s a nice way to save water—helping the environment and saving money. I also noticed this dual flush system in Taiwan.

So we’ve used both types of toilet covers—both washable and disposable. I prefer the disposable type, because they come in so many other different types. Like our current one: Alpaca (above). Isn’t that cute?

Washable toilet covers run from ¥500 to ¥1,000 (in regular, home improvement stores) and disposable toilet covers run from ¥100 to ¥300.

Like I said before, I like the disposable ones the most because they have all different designs. We get a new cover every other month.

And, of course, this is so much better than when we were in Peru and realized about half the Peruvian toilets don’t even have toilet seats. That was some serious culture shock for my husband, which I touched on when I wrote about the 12 Weirdest Things about Peruvian Toilets.

Japan is so adorable. I just, I can’t. I can’t. This is our toilet scrubber. Or whatever it’s called.

Isn’t it cute? Cute and functional—that’s Japan (if you want a good laugh, check out some of these Japanese beauty products).

Ryosuke was happy with the strawberry design (it was actually cheaper than the “normal” scrubber)—but then again, Japanese men rarely find their masculinity threatened by “cute” or “girly” things.

Want to see the top three? Check them out at Texan in Tokyo!