About the "facilities"

One thing we quickly learned in Japan, was that the restrooms are very different from those in America. For starters, the toilet is seldom in the same room as where you bathe. The toilet room is called the "toilet" and the "bathroom" is where you take a bath. Very logical. The toilets themselves, however, were a bit of a mystery to us. In Nobu's home, the toilet looked like this....

Fairly straight forward, right? But to flush it, you used the electric switch mounted on the wall.

You would push one of the top buttons for light use, and the other top button for heavier use. Then you could choose multiple washing cycles, which would spray some water onto your backside in different locations, and you could adjust the temperature and intensity of the spray. The reddish button turned the spray of choice off when you were finished.

A small hand sink for washing up, but not to be used for brushing your teeth, because tooth washing was reserved for the larger sink downstairs in the bathroom, where you wash.

Sometimes in public restrooms, the controls for flushing the toilet were on an arm rest of the toilet. Many of the facilities in the public bathrooms would create an electronic flushing noise when you entered the stall. My guess was this is used to prevent anyone from hearing you go about your business. On one occasion we found a toilet where you could choose from 3 different songs to play while you were doing your thing.

Sometimes the flushing was done with a button on the wall, sometimes it was a light that you held your hand over, and on one rare occasion, it took me about 5 minutes of searching through the stall to discover an actual handle on the side of the toilet tank that flushed just like one in the U.S. 

As for this....

Nope. Didn't even try. A person's gotta know their limits.