A Beginner’s Guide to Eighteen of the Buttons on Your Japanese Toilet (Pt. 1 of 6)

Button One: Heats the seat for a relaxing toilet experience.

Button Two: Bidet. Button two contains six other buttons, because there are six unique ways water can spray square into your butthole: Light mist, Ocean fog, Autumn rain, Geyser steam, Hurricane power wash, Volcano blast but with scalding water instead of lava.

Button Three: Car wash, but for butts. Sprays rainbow soap on your butt, hits your butt with thick plastic brushes, then finishes it off with a nice coating of hot wax. Button Four Air deodorizer with a variety of scents to cover up embarrassing smells: Spring meadow, light breeze, less stinky poop.

Button Five: Plays 90s smooth jazz to drown out embarrassing poop sounds. Toilet automatically assumes you’re doing the worst grunting and groaning, which ends up being more embarrassing than blowing up a toilet without music.

Button Six: Plays happy birthday if it’s your actual birthday, which is nice if nobody remembers.

Button Seven: Amplifies poop sounds. Because your toilet loves mischief. Button Eight: Plays motivational phrases during especially “tricky movements.” In case you need it.

Button Nine: Plays shameful phrases during especially “tricky movements.” Makes you feel bad to trigger a pavlovian response in your bowels, because feeling embarrassed is emotional coffee and cigarettes. In case you need it.

Button Ten: Automatically opens and shuts the lid so you don’t have to touch anything, except this button, which gets touched multiple times before, after, and during unsanitary toilet use. Button Eleven: Decoration, does nothing. But makes you feel better for having spent $700 on something you shit in.

Button Twelve: Self-cleaning feature. Sprays down and disinfects the toilet when you’re done using it, sometimes during if it feels particularly judgmental with what you’re doing to the toilet. Button Thirteen: Emergency call button. Your Japanese toilet allows you to speak with a professional in case anything goes wrong. Unfortunately, the thing that goes wrong the most is this button, which broadcasts your poop grunts to trained emergency professionals who have your full name, address, photographic likeness, exact height and measurements, and social security number.

Button Fourteen: Microwave. Your Japanese toilet doubles as a food preparation facility in case you live in a small apartment.

Button Fifteen: Poop scanning technology. Scans your poop to look for health abnormalities, but in a dystopian way, and sorts you into a rigid caste system based on your bathroom habits. Japanese toilet technology lives in the future in many ways, and unfortunately this feature comes from a bleak future where poop plays a vital role a the global totalitarian technocracy where shame is used to subjugate.

Button Sixteen: Mind control flush button so you don’t have to touch anything. And we mean anything.

Button Seventeen: Pre-cog feature. Knows you have to go to the bathroom before you, yourself know. Projects an image of future you going to the bathroom on a screen, but also makes it look like you murdered your wife, framing you for a bathroom-related crime you didn’t commit during a poop you never made. Your punishment is more embarrassment.

Button Eighteen: Lasers