Super Terrific Japanese Thing: Toilet Bike Neo

From Spoon & Tamago:

Hold on to your butts everyone! That’s right. Japan’s number one toilet maker TOTO has created a toilet-motorcycle hybrid vehicle that runs entirely on biogas
(read: human waste). Theoretically, as long as the driver continues to
eat and drink, the motorcycle could run forever! Dubbed the Toilet Bike Neo Project, the campaign is part of the TOTO Green Challenge, the company’s stated goal of achieving 50% reductions in CO2 emissions in bathrooms by 2017 (vs 1990 levels).

In just 6 days the highly anticipated toilet motorcycle will take off
on a month-long journey from Kyushu to Tokyo, making stops along the
way to show off their new innovation and to educate people on the
various green initiatives that TOTO is undertaking. …

Toilet Bike Neo is also equipped with some other cool functions. It uses
residual light imagery to write messages in the air as it zooms by (you
can see an example by scrolling down to their Sep 26 blog entry).
It can also play music to entertain spectators. Finally, the toilet
actually talks.

The Toilet Bike Neo begins its triumphant journey across Japan tomorrow, beginning with a trip to a boulder shaped like a giant ass. Yes, seriously. Normally this is the part where I’d offer some kind of opinion or insight on the Toilet Bike, but frankly, I’m too stunned to type. All I can think about is aliens, a million years from now, coming to a desolate, humanity-free earth and finding the Toilet Bike as one of the last artifacts of humanity and basing all their assumptions about the human race on it. And how much I really, really want that to happen. Infinite thanks to Matt H. for the tip.