Now the entire planet is interconnected... by sewers

Didn't only like half the U.S. have them?

Then again, there was that whole pesky world war about defeating evil fascists and junk.

Yep!

“In 1940, only 55 percent of homes with plumbing had what the government considers a "complete system" - hot and cold running water, a flush toilet and a tub or shower. Sixty years later, 99 percent of all homes had all those features.”

[Sauce] (https://www.ourmidland.com/news/article/Many-Changes-in-U-S-Homes-Since-1940-7059827.php)

Le Pew

Cool, thanks!

If you go to Paris now it is there’s human feces all over the sidewalks alleys streets it’s everywhere because the cost of rent and the housing market is so high that people shit to protest outside of multi million dollar apartments

Is it that percentage now for showers? Hahahs

Was that because WWII had destroyed the infrastructure or indoor plumbing just hadn't caught on before the war?

As opposed to a public indoor bathroom? Please say a crapper in the kitchen was never a thing... :)

I still today dont have a private bathroom

Nope. That's just how it was.

There was one bathroom per floor for 3 apartments where I visited. Not the most comfortable experience.

Good old times in Paris when you had to play hop-scotch only around dog shit.

No, but a shared bathroom between multiple tenants was pretty common.

Paris is much dirtier feeling than London. Even the subway is grungier.

But they're cuisine is le best in ze world!

Why? Because it's French! There is no other reason they're food is the best, it's just French and that's it and butter.

Until the late 1950's the majority of fertilizer in Japan was untreated human waste.

Old style Japanese houses had a room, for pooping, that was over a pit that was emptied weekly and used as fertilizer. An indoor outhouse so to speak.

There are still many houses that use this system, usually in more rural areas.

So these are private and indoor, but not in the way most Westerners think of private and indoor.

Usually it's dog feces, and believe me, it used to be wayy worse 20 years ago

Ahh, of course - like when you might have found an older (very old now!) hotel where not all rooms were en suite.

Now they are up to at least 10%.

Bathtubs in the kitchen used to be a thing. That's where you produced the hot water, that's where you took baths. Indoor plumbing came about much earlier than indoor plumbing with heated water. You'd use your stove to heat the water, there was no hot water system.

Cold water flats were the standard apartment in NYC and many big cities until after WW II.

The rent is too damn high AND people are shitting in the streets, but they're unconnected. Both things are happening but they're not related.

I was there several years and was looking for hotels. Somebody online recommended one because of its location and it was close to a subway station. I immediately dismissed that one because it had a shared bathroom.

Or simply a hostel, lol

And most garbage like broken pottery was collected and used for land reclamation projects. There's an interesting display in the Edo-Tokyo-Museum about it. We used to recycle before we used to recycle.

My dad remembers 1-3 communal toilets for an entire street and he’s 63. Europe didn’t evolve much beyond the late medieval periods for a very long time.

or an outhouse

I don't know, wasn't Europe like just a couple of decades behind urban America?

The European landscape was dominated by farms, horse carriages and cobblestone roads for a very long time. The America of the 50s looked like a space age civilization compared to my own country back then lol.

> Edo-Tokyo-Museum

That is a stunning building, and a stunning museum.

Absolutely! And I was blown away by the fact they offer free tour guides inside if they are available. I had a private tour in 2018 and I am still grateful for that.

Hence the development of the bidet (not the recent bidet attachment; the fixture that looks like a mashup of a toilet and a sink) - it took less room than a bathtub and used a lot less water, so you'd straddle it to wash your naughty bits in between your weekly bath.