Bizarre Japanese Porta Potty Prank

image Japanese TV (especially their game shows and reality shows) is notorious for airing some pretty bizarre and cruel stunts. Here are two good examples of that. These videos come from a candid-camera style show. I don't know it's name. In the first video an outdoor porta potty is equipped with a hydraulic lift that, ten seconds after the door is shut, lifts the bewildered occupant high into the air. And as NetNewsAsia points out, "for many people, ten seconds is evidently more than enough time to get down to the job at hand."

imageIn the second video a massaging chair at a ski resort is rigged to send the occupant flying backwards through a trapdoor into the snow. The prank is then updated to make the chair jet-powered. Now its terrified occupants are sent blasting at top speed down the ski slope in a runaway chair.

If these pranks were done in America, I can't imagine someone not getting sued. Assuming, that is, that the pranks haven't been staged (i.e. that the victims aren't really actors). I think there's a good probability that they are. The Japanese have a term for staged events on shows like this: Yarase. Yarase is so common over there that many viewers just assume that most of the weird stuff they see on TV is fake.

Photos Pranks

Posted on Tue Aug 08, 2006



Comments

There is a funny weblog with weird snippets from Japanese TV shows here: http://www.tvinjapan.com
Posted by LaMa  on  Tue Aug 08, 2006  at  11:43 PM
omg that is so mean!
Posted by hmmm  on  Wed Aug 09, 2006  at  12:38 AM
The last one (the jet-powered ski chair) must be fake. I'm surprised no one was hurt, especially the guy whose chair flipped over.

I don't know about the others...the older guy looked pretty pissed off. And I felt sorry for the guy whose towel got caught in the door.
Posted by Edward  on  Wed Aug 09, 2006  at  12:52 AM
I think we should adopt the word "Yarase" to refer to our current government.
Posted by Cranky Media Guy  on  Wed Aug 09, 2006  at  01:50 AM
I've seen another 'porta potty' video where it counts down to 10 again, only this time the whole floor(and toilet) is pulled out from the side by a speed boat, and goes racing around the lake, with the victims with their pants down clinging to the pipes and bowl.
They all ended up dunked way out in the water, and some of them were women quite clearly with their pants still down.
Yup, I'd say they're paid actors, or the Japanese have a sense of humour and duty that goes beyond normal comprehension.
Posted by AussieBruce  on  Wed Aug 09, 2006  at  06:32 AM
The prank with the speedboat and waterskiing toilet occurs at the end of the first video above. But all pranked were guys. Unless there's a longer version somewhere.
Posted by The Curator  in  San Diego  on  Wed Aug 09, 2006  at  08:40 AM
Re CrankyMediaGuy's comment above I can do no better than to copy here a comment from a thread just a few below this one:

"It's staggering how quickly people are to push their own agendas rather than actually discuss the topic at hand.
Posted by Charybdis in Hell on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 01:51 PM"
Posted by Sam  on  Wed Aug 09, 2006  at  08:46 AM
"Yarase is so common over there that many viewers just assume that most of the weird stuff they see on TV is fake."

That would make them a lot smarter than viewers in North America.
Posted by Captain Al  on  Wed Aug 09, 2006  at  10:01 AM
OMG that was so friggin hilarious. My co-workers and I have been ROTFL through the whole massage chair thing. Nice to start the day off with a good laugh, kinda therapeutic. The ski-chair was the best one.

Their responses do look genuine, but i'm leaning toward staged. Just too extreme a prank to pull on ppl off the street, and the ski chair looks quite dangerous as well.
Posted by Grain  on  Wed Aug 09, 2006  at  10:34 AM
I'm not sure what's worse.

The prank itself - or all those people sitting naked on the same leather/vinyl chair - ewwww.
Posted by Mike  on  Wed Aug 09, 2006  at  10:42 AM
The one great cultural universal seems to be that wherever you go in the world, television content is unbelievably stupid.
Posted by Big Gary  on  Wed Aug 09, 2006  at  04:41 PM
I saw that massage chair segment when it aired here in Tokyo. You can bet that it is all rigged.
If it were real the backlash would be unbelievable. I imagine few of those ejected would move until a helicopter airlifted them to a hospital, where their lawyers would be waiting to CLEAN UP. The Japanese have a saying, and they use it daily: FUZAKERUNA ^_^
Posted by Vince  on  Thu Sep 21, 2006  at  06:08 AM
My gosh... it's like culture shock and half, it is amazing what people find funny.
Posted by Porta Potty  on  Thu Aug 27, 2009  at  03:29 PM
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.