At NEXCO-Central, we believe that restroom breaks are part of trip experiences.

Traveling and commuting by car offers extinguished experience which you can’t get by traveling by railroad or

airplanes. When you take a break at a rest area, you can stretch tired body under open air, try a gourmet local food,

and of course, you stop by at a restroom. Every single experience remains trip memories.

We offer clean, user-friendly, comfortable restrooms for customers.

Nowadays, we’ve seen such clean restrooms everywhere at rest areas.

The background of pursuing user friendly restrooms is that NEXCO-Central strongly believes that “restroom

experience is part of trip experience.’’ “restrooms should be clean and beautiful in order for customers to spend

comfortable time at rest area for 24hous a day and 365 days a year.’’

Therefore, we have put top priority on restroom improvement.

We have worked on remodeling of facilities, developing cleaning methods and seizing cause of smell.

We started renovating the restrooms at Nihondaira PA in 2008, seeking to provide a comfortable and beautiful

restroom space.

Our renovated restrooms have been very well acclaimed by our customers and won several awards.

Tips of some restrooms’ secrets might be an exciting topic during a road trip.

Let us share our restroom initiatives with you.

Enjoy plenty of interesting stories.

Never keep customers wait for longer than 2 minutes. Our formula for “optimal number of toilets” won the

Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism’s Award at the Japan Toilet Awards.

The Japan Toilet Awards were established in 2015 at the recommendation of a government panel. It’s set up to

consider ways of improving the quality of everyday life. 28 public restrooms and projects were recognized, one of

which was the restrooms at NEOPASA Shimizu on the Shin Tomei Expressway.

Comfortable lobby spaces, universal designs, and clean easy-to-use powder rooms are just some of the

state-of-the-art facilities these restrooms offer. However, what they were actually recognized for was a formula for

the “optimal number of toilet bowls.”

Our concept is to “never keep our customers wait for longer than 2 minutes*.” We collect log data on toilet bowls

usage rates, and used our own, proprietary logic to conduct analytics on the big data we compiled.

*We set two minutes as an acceptable waiting time considering customers’ opinions.

We have succeed on calculation on numbers of toilet bowls are necessary which queues would not be formed, with

neither too many nor too few booths. This formula for the “optimal number of toilet bowls’’ has since been

implemented in all of rest areas on the Shin Tomei Expressway including NEOPASA Shimizu. If you ever have an

opportunity to travel the Shin Tomei Expressway, be sure to stop by and experience it for yourself.

When warm clothes start to come out, our winter services start

You might think that one of the hardest things about winter is a cold toilet seat. No one likes to sit down on cold

toilet seat. That sense of tension the moment you sit down. It’s always a bit of a shock. In 2006, we have started to

change over to heated toilet seats with warm-water bidet functions. By 2008, all Western-style toilet bowls in our

restrooms had been converted to “warm specifications.” All toilet bowls installed recently come with these seats as

standard.

Our winter service is that we switch over to warm water in restroom faucets. To meet the needs of customers who

need warm water, as well as preference of cold water even in winter, we switch about half of faucets over to warm

water. The switchover timing differs from region to region. We look at previous years’ timing and the changes in

temperature on that year, it tends to happen in November in most cases.

When you stop by at NEXCO-Central’s restroom at rest areas, if faucet water turns out warm, you’ll know that

winter has arrived.

Please look after your health, avoid catching cold, and enjoy your road trip.

“Home-made” detergents use bacteria to eat the source of odors

Visible areas and easily reachable areas can be cleaned by hands. On the other hand, those areas that can’t be seen or

reached are beyond the work of hands. Sometimes, however, the sources of unpleasant odors are found in those

inaccessible areas, such as pipes and septic tanks. To solve this problem, we used “science” on cleaning, and reached

a conclusion.

“Even if humans can’t reach these places, micro-organisms can!” That is, micro-organisms such as natto bacteria,

yeast fungus, and lactobacilli remove the slimy coating on the inside surfaces of pipes and eat urinary calculi. They

multiply and infiltrate sewage tanks, and eat bad odors at their source. We have produced our own detergents with

these micro-organisms.*

* We manufactured our cleaning liquid based on a detergent called Ehime AI, whose manufacturing method has been

made public by Ehime Institute of Industrial Technology.

This detergent has been amazingly effective. Just by pouring it into a toilet bowl every day, the odor intensity values

in the septic tanks kept going down. In toilet bowls that had been treated for a month, the numbers fell to a point

where hardly any odor could be detected.

By approaching scientifically, NEXCO-Central’s restrooms remain clean.

Restrooms that is well considerate to people from all over the world

Any people regardless of age and gender in every country in the world need restrooms. Elderly customers, customers

in wheelchairs, and more than 13 million people from overseas who visit Japan every year all need to use restrooms.

We have standardized the sign for our restrooms. To ensure that the meaning can be conveyed as much as possible

without the use of text*, we have adopted pictograms that meet the standards of relevant organizations, the Japan

Industrial Standard, and international standards. We also have paid attention to the positioning and design of our sign,

such as their shape and color, brightness, line of sight, and the size of signs. Now they are easy to see, as large as

possible with easily recognizable colors even for children and customers in wheelchairs.

We hope that customers from all over the world will use our restrooms comfortably. We will continue these kinds of

activities to provide even better comfortable restrooms.

* Where the use of text is unavoidable, signs are displayed in five languages – Japanese, English, traditional and

simplified Chinese, and Korean.

We choose our own uniforms, so we can clean restrooms with pride.

When you visit several of NEXCO-Central’s rest areas, you may notice that our area casts wear different uniforms in

each area. The reason is that they decide on their uniforms themselves at each area. In some cases, they actually tried

on a variety of designs and specifications, and some even held fashion shows to help them decide.

The reason why we pay so much attention to uniforms is that we wanted to create an environment in which our area

casts could engage in maintenance cleanliness of our restrooms with a sense of pride, enthusiasm, and responsibility.

No matter how much state-of-the-art technology we use and no matter how meticulously we design our restrooms,

the thing that keeps our restrooms beautiful is hand works. If area casts can feel good about cleaning our restrooms,

their feelings surely transform to customers. Such intention may appear in their uniforms.

Next time you stop by one of our rest areas, be sure to check out area casts’ uniforms, also.

Instead of greeting face by face, we welcome customers by hand-made goods and flowers.

Our area casts all receive omotenashi (service and hospitality) training from professional instructors. Since rest areas

are not actually shops, our area casts don’t have a chance to say it directly even though they are welcoming

customers.

Area casts at each rest area have come up with their own unique ideas to show their hospitality to customers. For

example, playing on the similarity between the Japanese word for good fortune, fuku, and the word for owl, fukuro,

one rest area has hand-made owl ornaments displayed in rest rooms. At another rest area, fresh flower arrangements

are decorated on washstands with hand-written notes giving the name, meaning and the best season of the flowers.

These small gestures of omotenashi are “Welcome!” greetings for our customers.

1:9 is the golden ratio of Japanese-style to Western-style.

Restrooms in department stores, theme parks, and other new facilities are almost all equipped only with

Western-style toilet bowls. However, there are always some Japanese-style toilet bowls at our rest areas. The ratio of

Japanese-style to Western-style is about 1:9. That ratio has remained unchanged since the first modernization of

expressway restrooms in Japan at Nihondaira PA. That is because expressways are for the use of everyone, young

and old, men and women. As long as there are customers who prefer to use a Japanese-style toilet bowl, we want to

accommodate those customers’ wishes. This intention appears as 1:9 ratios. It is the golden ratio for providing

service to all customers equally.

Ebina SA is the most frequently used rest area in Japan, with 60,000 customers a day, but there are just 7 area

casts.

Ebina SA is the first rest area where most cars and buses traveling from Tokyo to Nagoya direction stop by.

Particularly, many large buses and sightseeing buses use this rest area frequently, and in its busiest times, as many as

60,000 people stop by at Ebina SA in one day. To cope with these large numbers, Ebina SA has more toilet bowls

than other rest areas, a total of 224 to be exact (male and female toilet bowls combined). All of these toilet bowls are

kept clean and beautiful by just 7 area casts.

There are two broad categories of toilet bowl cleaning – the basic cleaning, which is done once a day and involves

scrubbing toilet bowls with a brush with detergent, and patrol cleaning, in which area casts do the rounds of

restrooms six or seven times a day, replacing toilet papers and cleaning up dirty areas. Because Ebina SA is such a

busy rest area, timing of cleaning is very difficult, and it can sometimes take up to twenty minutes to clean one booth.

However, area casts in Ebina SA are well trained. They wait for the best timing in the afternoon to perform basic

cleaning quickly and thoroughly.

Ebina SA is the only rest area in which patrol clean is conducted on a 24-hour basis. We are pleased to say that we

receive high evaluation from customers. We always welcome customers with clean and comfortable restrooms at

Ebina SA when you are on the Tomei Expressway.

Area casts exchange information with each other to skill up their omotenashi skills.

Our area casts periodically invite professional instructors for training from cleaning techniques to customer service

in an effort to improve their basic skills. On the other hand, real omotenashi skills come on their own cleaning

experiences. In order for area casts to share useful ideas and responses with other casts in other areas, they publish

and distribute a hand-made newsletter, Eriko Walking in Rest Areas. They use this newsletter to share innovations

that have been well received from customers and new cleaning ideas which don’t appear in textbooks, and other

information that can help them improve their skills, to help them raise their motivation.

Examples of tips that have been shared include, “melanin sponges are good for cleaning the dirt off braille blocks,”

and “using a rotating mop makes it easier to wipe down the underside of urinals.” One area cast wrote, “Something

that made me really happy was when a customer told me, she looked forward to using our restrooms.” This

newsletter brings together the omotenashi know-how that our area casts have collected during their work.

The inaugural issue was published in April 2012, and new issues have been published every two months without a

break ever since. Our area casts are united in their determination to work hard together to keep restrooms clean and

comfortable.

“Feel like a princess♪” Restrooms offering a “luxury experience,” are inspired by the voices of our female

customers.

The concept of a restroom installed in the second floor retail space of NEOPASA Surugawan Numazu (inbound) is

that women who are sensitive to trends would remember, one that they would want to visit again and tell their

friends about. We wanted to create a restroom space that was like something out of a palace, where a woman could

feel like a princess. The rounded design portrays a sense of softness and splendor, while stylish lighting fixtures, oval

mirrors, and other touches speak to the hearts of women who visit.

The part that best represents this concept is the powder room. Each mirror has its own separate, individual space,

where women can sit and relax as they touch up their make-up.

To make it easier for customers to apply their make-up, each space is lit with bright light bulbs.

This is truly a luxurious restroom, filled with women’s wishes and desires. If you are ever in the area, please stop by.

It’s definitely worth experience this restroom.

Aiming for hospitality that’s better than any other theme parks! Clean, neat, and odorless restrooms

In those days, clean restrooms are only to be expected. We are taking one step further with efforts to make our rest

areas even more pleasant and comfortable spaces for our customers. We call our cleaning staff as “area casts”. They

attend annual training sessions; where not only they upgrade their practical skills, but also they take customer service

training to gain skills such as welcoming and omotenashi. We invite professional instructors who have been involved

in employee training at famous theme parks and former flight attendants. These instructors teach our area casts the

basics of hospitality, such as how to greet customers and show consideration, and to help them improve their

communication skills. We will pursue to create spaces that are as enjoyable and pleasant as theme parks or hotels.

We welcome comments and requests from our customers at all times.

No queues or crowd at NEXCO-Central’s restrooms!? The secrets to our restroom spaces

~ EXPASA Fujikawa (outbound), Ashitaka PA (inbound and outbound) ~

Restrooms on expressways become particularly crowded during extended holiday periods like summer vacations.

However, many years of studies have shown that even when restrooms are at the busiest time, some toilet booths are

not being used. Those are booths right down the back of the room. We all have a tendency to use booths closest to

the entrance, and once a queue forms there, we incline to line up behind everyone else.

Once we realized this, we came up with design innovations to encourage the use of booths at the back, by taking

advantage of these human tendencies. It succeeded in making major improvements on crowds in restrooms. For

example, we painted illustrations on walls in warm colors that used perspective to make things that are farther away

seem closer. We also adopted a lighting design known as the “savannah effect,” which takes advantage of the human

tendency to move towards light by increasing the brightness of the lighting gradually from the front to the back of

restrooms. The incorporation of these kinds of spatial design innovations naturally draws customers towards booths

further to the back.

These innovations proved immediately effective. Around the time the new designs were installed, approximately 8%

of the usage of the front booths shifted to booths at the back, making the distribution of booth usage more even. We

even started to see complimentary comments from customers on Twitter and other social media platforms. The next

time you stop at EXPASA Fujikawa (outbound) and Ashitaka PA (inbound and outbound), let’s check the design out.

Area Casts’ Best Practices: Top Four

Expressway restrooms are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a week. NEXCO-Central is responsible for around 9,000

toilet bowls in total. Here, we’ll show you some of customer oriented practices that our area casts use to keep

restrooms clean all year round. You may even be able to use some of them at home.

Practice 1 Use different-colored towels for cleaning different areas!

For example, what would happen if you use white towels for both washing toilet bowls and washbasins? You may

get confused and mix up towels you are using on the different areas. To counter this, area casts had the practical idea

of using different colored towels for different areas. In fact, they have as many as five different towels of varying

colors and types.

Yellow towels are for washbasins, white towels are for toilet bowls, and blue towels are for floors.

They also have blue cleaning cloths for mirrors and red cloths for metal areas in booths.

Practice 2 For babies’ skin, baby change beds are wiped with boiling water to stop bacteria spreading!

Baby skin touches baby change beds directly. The easy option to keep them hygienic would be to wipe them down

with alcohol, but it can be irritating to baby’s sensitive skin. Our area casts wipe these pads down with boiling water.

At temperatures as high as 90º Celsius, it dries quickly and prevents from multiplication of bacteria.

Area casts wear an extra pair of gloves under their rubber gloves when they are disinfecting.

Practice 3 Even six years after being refurbished, metal surfaces are still so shiny you could see your face in them!

Metal surfaces are wiped down with blue cleaning cloths. The secret to keeping them so shiny for such a long time is

polishing them carefully every single day. When dirt first adheres to a surface, it doesn’t require much effort to

remove. It just needs to be wiped off. However, if it’s left for a little while, stains become increasingly stubborn and

difficult to remove without scrubbing. Our area casts are well skilled in these characteristics of dirt, so, every day,

they make sure that they don’t let even a speck of dirt go unwiped. This is what keeps those metal surfaces so shiny

for a long time. They are the results of polishing carefully every single day.

Practice 4 Each area cast has his or her own different cleaning brushes! Some even come from 100-yen shops!!

Because all of our area casts have their own cleaning styles, and there are also subtle differences in the amount of

pressure they put on their equipment when cleaning, they research the best types of brush that suit them as

individuals. They use brushes with different sizes and hardness for different tasks. Some of those brushes even come

from a 100-yen shop. Area casts don’t need any special equipment. They make their own efforts to keep our

restrooms clean.

Experiment is ongoing at EXPASA Ashigara (outbound)! By pressing a “Cleaning Request Button,” an area

cast come running in a few minutes.

Including men’s and women’s, and multifunctional ones, there is a total of around 9,000 toilet bowls in

NEXCO-Central rest areas. In order for our customers to use them comfortably, all of those toilet bowls are cleaned

every day. However, we wondered if there was something we could do to respond promptly when a customer notices

dirty spots before area casts. This resulted in the “Cleaning Request Button.” That is currently being experimented at

EXPASA Ashigara (outbound).

If you press the button, an area cast will arrive in a few minutes, check dirty spots and clean it up. The problem

solved! All take in just fifteen minutes or so.

If you find dirty spots in restrooms at EXPASA Ashigara (outbound), let us know by pressing the “Cleaning Request

Button.”

* Response might take longer at night and in busy time.

Nihondaira PA was the first rest area in Japan to embark on the modernization of its restrooms.

Before our company was privatized, restrooms on expressways didn’t have a good reputation. They were dark,

dreary and damp. After privatization, we realized that it was unacceptable that restrooms should not be unpleasant

for customers, and we became the first expressway operator to improve its restrooms. Our basic concept was to

create restrooms that were more comfortable, convenient, fun and beautiful. Restrooms in Nihondaira PA were firstly

modernized. To keep restrooms clean and hygienic at all times, floor surfaces were changed from tiles to rubber.

Major changes were also made to the number of toilet bowls and layouts to minimize a crowd.

Also, to create bright and open spaces, skylights were installed on ceiling let in plenty of natural light. Lobby was

established for customers to wait in comfort, and other innovations were adopted to make restroom spaces as

pleasant as possible.

The new and improved restrooms became popular with customers, and in 2009, Nihondaira PA restrooms received

the Good Toilet Recommendation* award from the Japan Toilet Association. Rest breaks are part of the travel

experience, so we want our customers to feel good about using our facilities with comfort. With this intention in

mind, we enthusiastically improve our restrooms.

* Good Toilet Recommendation: Awarded to toilet structures and projects selected as particularly good examples by

the Japan Toilet Association, which was established in 1985 to explore “good toilets towards which Japan should

aim.”

Some of area casts hold service care-fitter qualifications.

Japan is described as one of the most rapidly aging countries in the world. Every year, a growing number of active

seniors are enjoying dynamic lives after retirement. We have seen large numbers of elderly customers traveling by

road, either on buses or by car with their families. To help our elder customers and customers with disabilities to use

our rest areas in comfort, several times a year we invite professionals in service care-fitting to help acquire

knowledge about how to combine the spirit of hospitality with assistive skills.

Area casts who are interested in learning further can go on to obtain the qualification of “service care-fitter”, and

they use knowledge and experience to serve our customers and in their cleaning work. This kind of service has

particularly in high demand in around Tokyo areas, so many of our area casts at those rest areas hold these

qualifications. Please check area casts’ name badges. Those with the service-care-fitter qualification have a

certification mark on their badge, so please feel free to ask them for help.

Secrets of our restroom floor surfaces. They change from tiles to rubber?

Have you noticed that floors of our restrooms are gradually being converted from tile to rubber surfaces? Both floors

and walls of our restrooms were covered in tile, because tile floors used to be the best surface for keeping smells

away and for efficient cleaning. However, by flashing floors with water for cleaning, floors got wet and slippery.

And customers’ shoes would also get wet. Only the way to solve this problem was by closing a restroom until floors

dried, but, that meant that customers couldn’t use a restroom during that time. This is why we employed rubber

surfaces on floors.

These floors can be cleaned without completely wetting them and they don’t need time to dry. So, it cut down

customers waiting time drastically.

Customers have been pleased by these rubber floors. They have commented that they don’t smell, they don’t get wet,

and they seem clean. Expressway restrooms continue to change, as the times change and technology evolves. What

changes will appear next?

With IT, you can see at a glance which booths are vacant.

In a long rows of toilet booths in restrooms, it can be difficult to know whether booths all the way at the back are

vacant or not. This can tend to cause situations in which queues form to booths at the front, despite their being vacant

booths at the back. We solved this problem by attaching magnetic log sensors to doors of each booth, and installing

an “Availability Monitor’’ at the entrance of restrooms.

This has made it possible to direct customers to vacant booths in real time. This system has been installed in only

some of our rest areas to date, but it will be progressively expanded moving forward. Next time you stop by at our

restrooms, check an “Availability Monitor” to find a vacant booth.

40 seconds for a toilet bowl, and 3 minutes for a booth, and every inch is sparkling.

Even when we are cleaning, our priority is our customers. Even so, at peak times, there is often a constant stream of

customers using restrooms. At such times, unless we are quick and efficient, it can be difficult to finish cleaning. Our

area casts, therefore, finish up their work with astonishing speed, and they do it in a beautiful way. It takes them a

mere 40 seconds or so to clean a toilet bowl, and about three minutes to clean the entire booth. The secret is cleaning

by hand. At home, it is common to use a long-handled brush to clean a toilet bowl, but our area casts clean it more

directly with rubber gloves and sponges. This direct cleaning means they can reach every inch of a toilet bowl with a

sponge. Also, because they can feel dirty points by touch, they don’t miss any stains. If they find a stubborn stain that

can’t be removed with a sponge, they scrub it thoroughly with a small brush that can get into small places. They then

use a hand mirror to do a final check. They check even the most hidden places right at the back of a bowl, to ensure

that not a single speck of dirt remains and that every inch of a toilet bowl is sparkling.

All of our restrooms are endorsed by a toilet consultant.

Toilet consultant is introduced by Amenity Co., Ltd. that was accredited as an in-house certification program by the

Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in 2003. Toilet consultants have passed both written and practical exams,

making them “toilet professionals.” Their fundamental stance is to not just solve problems with restrooms on a

superficial level, but to prevent any potential problems and to ensure the efficient and hygienic maintenance and

management of them. Where necessary, they provide solutions and even make proposals for maintenance and

management methods.

We used to rely on our senses, such as sight and smell, to judge the cleanliness of our restrooms. Now, however, we

have learned from these toilet consultants the specific, professional criteria for assessing cleaning, to raise the

standards of all of our staff even further.

These toilet consultants perform a very stringent assessment of our restrooms. Starting with odor, they look at

various factors such as ventilation, lighting intensity, humidity, and an “unpleasantness index.” After their

comprehensive assessment, they indicate the result with specific numbers. Restrooms at all of NEXCO- Central’s

rest areas undergo this assessment once a year. We ask the consultants to make any suggestions for improvement at

the same time. By putting those improvements into practice, we maintain the comfort and cleanliness of our

restrooms.

Central Nippon Expressway Company Limited Mitsui-Sumitomo Bank Nagoya Building, 2-18-19, Nishiki, Naka-ku, Nagoya-shi Aichi 460-0003 Japan TEL:+81-52-222-1620 FAX:+81-52-232-3736

http://global.c-nexco.co.jp/en/