On Aug 7, 9:44 pm, yawnmoth wrote:
I was in a French hotel, recently, that had two sinks - one where
you'd expect, in the counter, and another beside the bathtub -
shorter than even you'd expect a toilet to be. Here's a pictu

http://www.geocities.com/terra1024/sink.jpg

The toilet was in a separate room.

Anyway, my question is... what's the point of this second shorter
sink?

Its a Bidet to wash yer ass.



A bidet is for washing the genital and anal areas, sometimes the feet.
Lots of pics on the 'net if anyone wants to bother searching, too. Why
guess when it can be looked up more accurately? This article seems to
say it well:



http://www.bidetoo.com/
If you grew up in North America, chances are that you probably did not
grow up using a bidet at home. The bidet (French derived, and pronounced
like filet) is a bathroom fixture used to bathe the external genital and
the anal region of the body. The bidet is shaped like a washbasin and is
usually placed beside the toilet, which allows the user a quick and
convenient means of bathing the target region.

The primary purpose of a bidet is to allow the user to maintain a
constant state of good hygiene. A person simply cannot thoroughly
cleanse the target region through the use of toilet paper alone. When a
person only uses toilet paper, she is essentially carrying the filth on
her body until she takes a bath or a shower. The use of the bidet is
becoming a modern hygienic norm much like the brushing of teeth. While
it is not absolutely necessary that the bidet is used, it provides the
user with a significant boost in hygiene.

The bidet cleanses the user with water that shoots out from a high
pressure nozzle. While the bidet is designed to be used after the
removal of waste to cleanse the anus, in certain parts of Europe and
Middle Eastern Asia, a bidet is sometimes used to quickly wash the feet.
It has also been noted that sometimes people use the bidet as a
"mini-bathtub" to wash their children. It is generally not a good idea
to wash children inside a bidet with minor exceptions.