Bidets are vastly overrated

A friend was telling me about his recent travels in Japan.  He mentioned that, even in some fairly rural and rustic settings, he was surprised to find high-tech bidets in the bathrooms.  He quipped, "The Japanese must have the cleanest assholes in the world."  

My response was, "Do they really, though?" — and I went on to give a broad-strokes version of the following considerations.

I've never understood why bidets are considered even adequate, let alone superior, for anal hygiene.  A little stream of water isn't going to remove all fecal matter from the pores.  Ask yourself this: in what other context is anything considered "clean" using water alone?  You don't shower or bathe using water by itself; likewise with your clothes, dishes, car — anything you wash is considered clean only by using a combination of water, soap, and some kind of scrubbing action.  

Think about it: if you somehow got feces on your hand, you wouldn't just run some water over it and go about your day.  And yet, that's exactly what bidets do!  I suppose it's the favorable comparison to mere wiping, along with the perpetually hidden location of the body — "out of sight, out of mind" — that allows bidet users to assume the results are good enough.  For me, though, only washing with soap and water after a bowel movement is good enough.

As for the practical question of how to do this, it’s not hard or complicated, whether at home or even while traveling:

At home, if your shower head is the fixed type, replace it with a removable/hand-held kind — it's way cheaper than a bidet, or even a bidet attachment, and easier to install.  Then, after wiping with toilet paper, sit on the edge of the tub (or squat in the shower stall) with the removable shower head in one hand and a bar of soap in the other, and wash the area thoroughly.  It takes only a minute or two, and you're actually clean down there — every bit as clean as if you'd just showered.

When traveling and using public toilets, before entering the stall, take three pieces of paper towel, fold each one in half twice, forming a hand-sized 4-ply square, then dispense a big dab of foaming soap, or a smaller dab of liquid soap (whatever’s available there; in my experience it's usually foaming soap) on one square and completely saturate one of the others with water; use the third to pat the area dry after.  (Yes, depending on how long you take to evacuate your bowels, some of the soap and water on the paper towel squares will have evaporated, but there will still be enough for an effective cleaning.)

Always wipe thoroughly with toilet paper before deploying the series of soapy and wet paper towels.  Also, when preparing to use an unfamiliar bathroom, it's a good idea to have some folded up paper towels in your pocket, in case the bathroom has hand dryers instead of paper towels.  I traveled around the country for years while living in a van, using many hundreds of public restrooms, and this practice proved to be highly effective at maintaining good anal hygiene.

A note on wet wipes or moist towelettes.  From my experience, I'd say these are better than either toilet paper alone or a bidet, but still not as thorough and effective as either of the soap and water methods described above.  Plus, most of them aren't meant to be flushed, and can wreak havoc on home septic systems.  For those reasons, I'd say that these products should be reserved for emergencies only.  (I always had a couple of individually foil-packaged moist wipes on-hand when traveling, just in case.  One such product I used is called Stall Mates, which is supposed to be flushable.)