Cracked Article by Chris Bucholz
The 6 Most Terrifying Features of Japanese Toilets
The Japanese are those few people. It turns out that nearly every toilet in Japan is equipped with a variety of auxiliary functions, some of them only slightly related to poop eating. Bidets, seat warmers and wireless remotes are all very common features. Many Japanese manufacturers are even building "smart" toilets capable of automated operations, increased user feedback and other feats that will blow your ass' mind.
Now, if you can look at that clip and not think of that semi-intelligent poo-eating machine becoming self-aware, realizing the raw deal it's been given and rising up to destroy its master, well, welcome to your first visit to Cracked.com. We hope you enjoy and are terrified by your stay.
Below is a list of some of the most advanced features that Japanese toilets have developed, descriptions of how they are meant to interact with Japanese hindquarters and how they will inevitably be used against us when the toilet fuel hits the fan. We cannot recommend strongly enough that you do not read this article while using the bathroom, lest you warn the toilets that we're on to them.
#6. Ass Showers
A very popular option found on Japanese toilets is the bidet, which is a pretty precious term for a jet of water that gets fired at your tenderness.
How This Will Go All Wrong
Just think for a moment about trusting any machine to root around in your turd vent, much less a machine that will certainly grow to hate you. What could go right with that plan?
"AHHHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHHHAHAHHA. YOU SHOULD HAVE HEARD THE SOUND YOU JUST MADE, FOODBAG."#5. Seat Warming
A poorly heated home makes any kind of winter-time contact with a toilet seat a potentially harrowing experience. And considering the natural tendency of our various sphincters to clench up when subjected to sudden shocks, a heated toilet seat actually seems like a pretty good idea. Nice one, Japan.How This Will Go All Wrong
Unless ...
Is there anything you put in close proximity to a toilet seat that is sensitive in any way? Like a kind of fun, goofy appendage? Let's say there is, and let's call him Johnson-San. How would Johnson-San feel if it was abruptly pinned by a scalding hot toilet seat that swung down suddenly?
"Ahh oh god oh god oh god I burned my dick and I peed on the floor but mostly that first thing shit heeeeeeelllllllp."#4. Deodorization
When a toilet is used successfully, it is often the case that fantastic odors are produced. For most Westerners, these fragrances are a great thing, a cause for celebration and windmill high-fives. But for the Japanese, they are a terrible embarrassment, a reminder that inside everyone lurks great evil. To counter these grim portents, many Japanese toilets contain deodorization features. These can include masking fragrances, but the more advanced models can even produce ozone, which is capable of chemically neutralizing many odors.How This Will Go All Wrong
Well, in high enough concentrations, ozone acts as an irritant to lungs and other mucus membranes. It's also, hilariously, flammable in the presence of a spark. And when a rash factory/incendiary device camped out by your personal area says it has some demands, see how closely you listen.
#3. Toilets That Taste Your Business
Japan has a serious appetite for technologies that will help maintain the health of its aging population. Toilets that are capable of measuring the user's blood pressure, body fat and level of sugar in the urine are all available. Many of them are also capable of communicating this information to doctors or other medical practitioners, who are presumably just delighted about seeing their inboxes fill up with news about people's outboxes.
It doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to see authorities using the very same technology to detect the presence of illegal substances in a user's waste and then have the toilet turn them in, like some kind of stool pigeon.
Sorry about that.
And from there it's no great leap to imagining a toilet framing you for a crime you didn't poop. If you think you'll get away by simply voiding into dishwashers, be sure to check back next week for our terrifying expose on the Japanese dishwasher industry (hint: they have no sense of right or wrong, and lasers).
#2. The Sound Princess
It's a well-known fact that Japanese women will expire of shame the instant anyone hears them pee, which became a serious problem with the invention of flush toilets and the splashy noises that accompany them. To stay alive, many Japanese ladies began repeatedly flushing the toilet as they used it to mask the sounds that nature forced them to make. As this was wasting a pretty stunning amount of water, someone with a really hilarious job was forced to invent the Otohime. Also known as the Sound Princess, the Otohime is a device mounted in a toilet stall capable of producing a tinny, unconvincing replica of a toilet flush.
No, it's not an intercom. Because that'd be weird.Thanks to advanced technology, devices can make all sorts of sounds now; the same hardware that makes a masking flushing noise could also be used to record and amplify the sound it was intended to mask. And if we're dealing with one of the advanced talking toilets, it could even perhaps add a commentary track, like it was a bonus feature on a DVD of a peeing woman that you'd just purchased.
"This bit right here is when Kumiko just went for it, and is, at least I think, really when she earned the respect of the crew."#1. Sphincter Relaxation Music
A toilet can be a pretty stressful place to be, what with all the concern you're feeling about the noises you're about to make.
"HUUUUUUUUUURRRRGGGK." Splush. "Man, I've got to stop eating Lego."
Audio designed to make you release the brakes on the poop train? That sounds a little bit like the fabled brown note, doesn't it? MythBusters famously tried to generate a brown note without, sadly, any success, so we guess we're safe, right? Except that they were only testing vibrations through the air, not with mechanical contact between the subject and the device. Like the kind of contact you'd see if a sentient toilet wanted to turn its food source/hated enemy inside out.
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Now, we've been a little alarmist here. When contacted, the Japanese scientists who made these toilets probably assured us that our concerns were completely unrealistic. We couldn't tell, of course; they were speaking Japanese. But then again, the scientists who threw nuclear weapons at the ocean assured everyone that it wouldn't create Godzilla, and that turned out to be exactly what happened. So we stand behind our alarmism. If just one person who reads this decides to never use a toilet without a gun pressed against the bowl, we'll consider this article a success.
Google Toilet View
April 26, 2010
No,
it’s not a new Google program—I smell lawsuits! (no pun intended)—it’s a
look at what curious Web surfers like ourselves might find by putting
the word “toilet” into Google images. Our Toilet-View Top Ten:1. Wearable Toilets…in Space!
The recent rash of fires in high-rise hotels and deaths occasioned thereby has given rise to the need for a breathing device and method for supplying a hotel guest and/or fireman with fresh air until he can be rescued. The device and method of this invention provide for the insertion of a breathing tube through the water trap of a toilet to expose an open end thereof to fresh air from a vent pipe connected to a sewer line of the toilet, to enable the user to breathe fresh air through the tube.
Google Toilet View
April 26, 2010
No,
it’s not a new Google program—I smell lawsuits! (no pun intended)—it’s a
look at what curious Web surfers like ourselves might find by putting
the word “toilet” into Google images. Our Toilet-View Top Ten:1. Wearable Toilets…in Space!
The recent rash of fires in high-rise hotels and deaths occasioned thereby has given rise to the need for a breathing device and method for supplying a hotel guest and/or fireman with fresh air until he can be rescued. The device and method of this invention provide for the insertion of a breathing tube through the water trap of a toilet to expose an open end thereof to fresh air from a vent pipe connected to a sewer line of the toilet, to enable the user to breathe fresh air through the tube.
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