Last fall, I spent several nights at a Four Seasons Hotel.  I was on a business trip (expense account) so I was able to enjoy my stay without worrying about the cost.  The hotel was quite lavish and beautiful.  My room was on the thirty-sixth floor with an astounding view of the sunrise each morning.  The linens were of the highest quality and housekeeping visited three times each day, once for the sole purpose of turning down the lights and changing the television to a channel that would be playing soft music upon my return.

The bathroom was incredible.  Marble floors and quartz countertops matched fine Italian tile work on the walls.  There was a huge soaker tub and a glass shower stall with body jets and an oversized shower head.  The towels were thick and soft and there were more than enough of them.  Fragrant shampoos and lemongrass soaps were provided for guests each day.  It was the nicest bathroom that I had ever used … without exaggeration, it was ten times the size of mine at home.

But the commode was in a tiny closet off to the side that had a door and an inexpensive (cheap) light fixture high above fitted with a low-wattage bulb.  Clearly, the interior designer who created the bathroom had no intention of using it for anything other than bathing.  While sitting in the closet, my elbows smacked the walls on either side.  It was dark and extremely uncomfortable.

Japanese manufacturer INEX has added 72,000 pieces of Swarovski cut crystal to one of their prized fixtures in an effort to lure customers to their company in the Ginza shopping district in Tokyo.  Their toilet, valued at $130,000, is not for sale.  It is being used as a marketing tool to lampoon the cleanliness of the country’s culture and will sit untouched in a showroom through the end of the year.

A fixture like this would be a wonderful addition to the bathroom at the Four Seasons Hotel.  Maybe they had one equally fantastic but I couldn’t tell in the tiny dark closet.