Quick flush
Place: Jinseon Korean BBQ
Address: Unit 5, Priory Place, Fairfax Street, Coventry, CV1 5SQ
Public vs private: For customers only
Ease of finding: Super easy
Stairs: None
Items in the cubicle: sink, air hand dryer, soap dispenser, toilet roll dispenser, small bin, coat hook, a mirror, a shelf above the toilet, an air freshener
Disabled toilet: Yes
Ease of finding: Visible but not in the same place as the non-disabled toilets
Baby Changing: In the disabled toilet
Long Flush
A giant red neon sign signposts the WC at Jinseon. I love a neon sign, and if I could fit one above my bathroom door, I hundred percent would. In Jinseon, it looks amazing against the chipboard walls, and it means no hunting fruitlessly for ages. You know exactly where the toilets are. The disabled toilet isn’t illuminated in the same way, and I think that’s a missed opportunity. The disabled toilet may not be in the same place, but it still deserves a giant neon sign.
Instead of the traditional splitting of genders, where there are two doors and behind them a space for a single gender, at Jinseon everyone walks under the red neon sign to be faced with a run of individual cubicles. The cubicles are then marked by gender. Or in the case of Jinseon, person with triangle facing up body or person with triangle facing down body.
I didn’t realise to start off with that the cubicles were marked by gender, as the icons Jineson use were so similar. As it turned out, Jinseon have four cubicles for women and three cubicles for men. While it initially felt cool to have more toilets for women, as invariably we have queues, I started thinking about why we have queues more often than men. Usually men’s toilets, I’m reliably informed, have urinals and cubicles, while women just have cubicles. That means more men can be using the loos at the same time, so of course they have queues less often. They have more potential user per square foot. But that advantage is lost when everyone has to use cubicles.
I also don’t understand why cubicles need to be marked by gender, if each cubicle is a self contained loo and sink. In the traditional set up, it’s so one set of loos can have a urinal, but if everyone has to use a cubicle which includes a sink and mirror and there are no urinals in sight, then why does it matter what gender the person ahead of you in the queue is. Thoughts on a postcard please.
The cubicles themselves were pretty nice. Though the aesthetic was different to the main restaurant, within the toilets it was really consistent (except for the toilet roll holder - not sure what happened there), and it wasn’t just white tiles, white paint. Any kind of colour scheme is more pleasant to be in than white everything. And helpfully, there was a shelf and a hook, so there’s somewhere to put anything you may have brought with you - coat, bag, phone that doesn’t fit in your jeans’ pockets.
Width wise, for me, the cubicle was good. I’m a UK size 18 so your mileage may vary, but I wasn’t pressed against the walls and even had some elbow room. And there was also a notice explaining the difference between squat toilets and sitting toilets in Japanese, Korean, Chinese and English, which though not helpful to me, would be helpful to people more used to squat toilets.
All in all, I think Jinseon’s toilets were pretty great. I didn’t have to climb up an endless staircase, I had somewhere safe to put my phone, and the aesthetic of the loos wasn’t just a white soulless box. Now, how do I acquire a neon sign to put over my bathroom at home?
Let me know your thoughts on gendering cubicles, width of cubicles and whether you too want a giant neon sign for your bathroom in the comments
I used the toilets at Jinseon Korean BBQ after paying in full for my dinner, and no-one knew I was a blogger.
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