The TOTO Museum in Kitakyushu was built to mark the centennial of the sanitary ware company founded here in 1917. TOTO is responsible for the washlet — the heated, bidet-equipped toilet seat that is now standard in Japanese homes and hotels and is increasingly exported worldwide. The museum traces the company's history from its origins making Western-style porcelain fixtures in the early 20th century to the global design and technology leader it became.
The museum is better than it sounds. The exhibits on the evolution of bathroom design, the mechanics of the washlet, and the cultural significance of sanitation in Japan are genuinely interesting, and the building itself — designed to evoke a ceramic tile — is architecturally distinctive. Aimed at both the curious and the already-converted.