Steve Marshall vividly remembers the night he was terrorized by a toilet.
Marshall, an embedded systems programmer, had just arrived in Tokyo to deliver a sales pitch. After a couple of hours happily spent swilling sake to celebrate the closing of a deal, he, not surprisingly, had to use the facilities.
"When I approached the toilet, the lid lifted automatically," said Marshall. "Then, as I stood in front of it, the seat also lifted. All I could think was, whoa … haunted bathroom! I just could not urinate for fear of what might happen next."
Marshall, like most other Americans who spend any time in Japan, eventually learned to use and even enjoy the high-tech toilets installed in many homes, offices and public spaces.
Soon, Americans can have their very own brainy bathrooms. Toto, Japan's largest toilet maker, plans to aggressively market its products here over the next few months.
"American toilet hygiene is very archaic," said Lenora Campos, Toto's U.S. public relations manager. "But people are savvier now. Bringing computer technology into the bathroom is an emerging trend. All that's needed is education and exposure to leading-edge products for Americans to see the benefits of really cutting-edge hygiene."
Exposure, at least of the unexpected sort, is exactly the problem with high-tech toilets, said Nathan Cohen, a British tattooist.
Cohen encountered a Toto toilet during a convention for skin artists recently held in Tokyo.
"So there I am, sitting on this sleek-looking loo, idly punching the buttons on this little panel next to the toilet, and all of a sudden my bum is right smack in the middle of the perfect storm," he said.
"Things are spraying, sloshing, squirting and swooshing. The theme from Jaws suddenly starts playing in my head, and I tell you I retracted my personal parts from that toilet very quickly," Cohen said.
"I see buttons, I press buttons," said Cohen. "And sometimes randomly pushing buttons does have unpleasant consequences -- but I never expected it to provoke a full-scale attack by a toilet."
Most of the toilet incidents that have befallen curious tourists in Japan were caused by people not being able to understand the Japanese-language labels on the toilets' control panels, Campos explained.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,59979,00.html
Marshall, an embedded systems programmer, had just arrived in Tokyo to deliver a sales pitch. After a couple of hours happily spent swilling sake to celebrate the closing of a deal, he, not surprisingly, had to use the facilities.
"When I approached the toilet, the lid lifted automatically," said Marshall. "Then, as I stood in front of it, the seat also lifted. All I could think was, whoa … haunted bathroom! I just could not urinate for fear of what might happen next."
Marshall, like most other Americans who spend any time in Japan, eventually learned to use and even enjoy the high-tech toilets installed in many homes, offices and public spaces.
Soon, Americans can have their very own brainy bathrooms. Toto, Japan's largest toilet maker, plans to aggressively market its products here over the next few months.
"American toilet hygiene is very archaic," said Lenora Campos, Toto's U.S. public relations manager. "But people are savvier now. Bringing computer technology into the bathroom is an emerging trend. All that's needed is education and exposure to leading-edge products for Americans to see the benefits of really cutting-edge hygiene."
Exposure, at least of the unexpected sort, is exactly the problem with high-tech toilets, said Nathan Cohen, a British tattooist.
Cohen encountered a Toto toilet during a convention for skin artists recently held in Tokyo.
"So there I am, sitting on this sleek-looking loo, idly punching the buttons on this little panel next to the toilet, and all of a sudden my bum is right smack in the middle of the perfect storm," he said.
"Things are spraying, sloshing, squirting and swooshing. The theme from Jaws suddenly starts playing in my head, and I tell you I retracted my personal parts from that toilet very quickly," Cohen said.
"I see buttons, I press buttons," said Cohen. "And sometimes randomly pushing buttons does have unpleasant consequences -- but I never expected it to provoke a full-scale attack by a toilet."
Most of the toilet incidents that have befallen curious tourists in Japan were caused by people not being able to understand the Japanese-language labels on the toilets' control panels, Campos explained.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,59979,00.html