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Testing Japan’s stick-on, mask-your-pooping-sound speakers against our coworker’s butt【Video】

Casey Baseel Jul 15, 2019
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When Go takes a dump, everyone in the office knows, but can a team of “sound princesses” solve the dilemma?

Cleansing bidet sprays and heated seats are definitely two of the highlights of Japanese toilet technology, but another handy feature that some people overlook is the otohime, or “sound princess,” function. A daintily named solution for a potentially embarrassing problem, turning on the otohime causes the relaxing sounds of a babbling brook to emit from the unit’s speaker, covering up the toots, blasts, and buriburi sounds that come from audibly expressive pooping sessions.

Unfortunately, the bathroom at SoraNew24 headquarters, which the entire staff shares, isn’t a fancy enough model to include an otohime function. Because of that, we’re sometimes serenaded by the moving sounds of the bowel movements of our reporter Go Hatori.

▼ Go’s violent wrestling face, which we’re assuming is close to his violent pooping face.

But it turns out that even if your toilet doesn’t come with one pre-installed, you can buy self-contained otohime boxes on Amazon, and for just 790 yen (US7)!

▼ The sound of our new office otohime

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by マミヤ狂四郎 (@rockethatori)

Figuring this was a necessary business expense, we immediately ordered one, and stuck it to the bathroom wall using the included adhesive. With the upgrade in place, it was time to test its effectiveness, so we called out “Hey, Go! Go take a dump, right now!”

▼ “Okaaaay…”

So Go shut the door and hit the otohime button. The rest of us could immediately hear the relaxing river sounds…and then, immediately after, a loud, wet, fart-like noise.

▼ PFRUMP!!!

The sounds of Go’s butt are simply too powerful for a single otohime to defeat, so we went with the anime magical girl tactic and ordered four more sound princesses, in hopes that combining their powers into a five-member combat team would be enough to suppress Go’s furious noise excretions.

▼ Remember, kids: If at first you don’t succeed, try doing it again, but four times as hard!

Using the physical prowess he displayed in his 100 million-view Spider-Man parody video, Go hit the five buttons in rapid succession, and their collective strength certainly seemed greater than that of a single unit.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by マミヤ狂四郎 (@rockethatori)

With the bathroom renovations done, the next task to complete was the digestive process of Go’s half-price Taco Bell lunch, and so he once again stepped into the bathroom, shut the door, fired up his array of otohime, and did the deuce-dropping deed.

The results? Take a listen for yourself:

▼ The five-otohime result can be heard when x5 appears on-screen, with the single-otohime result shown after.

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A post shared by Go Hatori （GO羽鳥） (@mamiyak46)

As you can see, or, well, hear, even five simultaneous otohime aren’t quite enough to hold back the sound waves Go’s posterior produces. That said, we definitely heard less from Go’s backside when he used five of the units instead of just one.

So while it’s not a complete solution, loading up on extra otohime does indeed alleviate the problem, and so we’re happy to now have five of them in the office bathroom. However, we’re not sure if continuing to add more otohime would eventually mask Go’s noises entirely, or if diminishing returns would set in, making this as good as things are going to get.

Sadly, our boss has said we have to get back to real work and stop recording the sounds of our coworker taking a dump, so we can’t answer the question for sure just yet.

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