>> Speaker A: Welcome back to privy. Privy is a podcast about bathrooms recorded from my home bathroom. I'm your host, Hunter Hoover, and I love bathrooms. And I will note, uh, last episode, I want to say last week, but it's more than a week. Last, um, episode, we were joined in Porta Potty with Josh Wehrman. And I gotta say, while that was fun, and I think we'll revisit the timber Ridge middle school Porta
potty parking lot. Porta potty. And while that was fun, uh, recording in my own home is a lot better. Uh, Josh, next time, I'll have you over here. I'll get you a seltzer. We'll sit back, we'll record. We'll do a little record, and do a little hang sesh. It'll be as nice as the Porta potty was a little record away from home. I think this will be better by far. I think you'll find it is much more, uh, welcoming, if you
will. There was something about the atmosphere now just the spider and the rat and just the thrill and the terror of, like, anytime a light came on outside the Porta potty, we were just scared. Um, and it really added to the spooky season. It was spooky season inside and outside that porta potty, especially in the blue lake that I was sitting on top of. Nothing scarier, really, truthfully, nothing scarier than a bacterial infection from other people's
poops. Like, to my knowledge, neither he nor I have had any complications related to our extended stay in the Porta potty yet. Uh, but I can't believe that it isn't somehow bad. It seems like it has to have been negative in some way. But as we near the end of October, we are also rounding out the end of our spooky season. And to do so, we need to take a small trip and explore bathrooms that are of not here in the United States. But before we do that, a, uh, brief
observation. Uh, I'm not a scary movie person. I don't really like being scared. I don't know why. But in the last week, my children have decided that scary stuff is fun. I don't understand it. I don't like being scared. My wife thinks it's hilarious to scare me. Um, and I have had people, like, at work scare me, and I'm one of those people that I just scream like a small infant girl, uh, whenever I get scared.
And then I get mad, I'm, um, a scream and then get angry, and I just kind of stew about it. But I'm not a scary movie person. I don't like the scary movies. I don't really like horror when the whole shtick of the movie is like, oh, man, this person got dismembered and you were watching. How scary is that? Wasn't that scary? Like, oh, man, they removed his arm from his body. Wasn't that terrifying? That's not for me. I don't mind monster movies. Uh, I don't mind suspense.
But something that I notice both in horror and scary movies, as well as, like, monster and suspense films, is they love to put movie like bathroom scenes in these movies. It is as if there is something inherently vulnerable about the bathroom in which they must put this very vulnerable spot in these kind of movies that kind of have a feast on one's vulnerability.
Now, this is not the week for privy's top horror movie scenes, or why we even have these, but it is, however, my way of becoming curious and getting more and more curious. Uh, I will admit we are at the point of this recording, less than ten calendar days away from Halloween. And I have watched no Halloween movies. I have taken in no Halloween any sort of media, and I simply do not care. Now, I
will care, but I do not. Now, I think the week of Halloween, I'll get in the weenie spirit, I'll be a real Halloweener. But that is those who Halloween Halloweeners. But I just couldn't give a flying flip about it right now. And it is, however, again, my way of getting curious as I think about these scary movies and the number of them that just have this suspenseful
scene related to the bathroom. We keep putting these monsters and other scary things in the bathrooms, and I'm sitting down, they're in the bathroom, and they're sitting down with their little hamigo hanging out, and they're like, yeah, but you might get stabbed. I know that you're just trying to drop a chaz, but there's a non zero chance that somebody's going to sneak in and stab you. People have been dying on the toilets for centuries. Check out episode ten ish of this pod.
But there's something vulnerable about pooping and being in the bathroom that makes it rife for horror. I've noted in the past, uh, that when I was in college, in our dorm, many of us in the dorm regularly pooped with the stall door wide open for fear of someone sneaking in and sneaking up on us. It wasn't a good defense mechanism, but it was a defense mechanism. I guess we would see an attacker before they attacked. Was the mindset behind that, I don't know. But then it got me wondering.
This time of year, it's spooky season and there's all sorts of scary stories out there. So I went looking for some scary toilet stories and I was taken to a page. If you've ever searched Google, I know that Google. Have you ever heard of it? But if you've ever searched Google and you've visited a page in the past, when you search something on Google, it will let you know if you've been there. Usually as evidenced by light purple lettering instead of the normal blue
that you can click. Now, when I typed in spooky or scary spoop key. Forgive me, father. Uh, spoopkey scary toilet stories, it displayed a page that it said I had already been to. And this is how I knew, uh, it was at this moment that I knew that my bathroom media and bathroom knowledge journey had come full circle. I have now begun to revisit pages that I have already visited for topics in the past. It was back when we discussed toilet
deities earlier this year. Well, uh, and, uh, the idea is essentially this. If there are toilet, quote unquote gods, if you will, like, who wants that one? But whatever. Then you know that there are, uh, toilet demons. This week on privy, we are going to focus in, the rest are for another day, but we are going to focus primarily in on a select demographic of toilet demon. That is the japanese toilet demons. But before we can do that, we need to talk about something called
Yokai. If you're like me and you hear the word yokai, you think of nothing else except for Yokai Watch. Now, Yokai Watch is a franchise of children's video games in which somebody, I'm gonna say namco, but I don't know if that's true, and I don't really care. Essentially, uh, tries to rip off Pokemon by making this boy that has a watch that can, I think, capture Yokai's. I'll be honest, I haven't played it and I don't care enough to figure
it out. But when I hear the word yokai, that's what I think of Yokai watch. These yokais are these spirit like things that inhabit, like, other things, which to me just sounds like a giga gaga ghost. But it turns out Yokai have been around for about 1500 years, or at least the idea of them, like, whether or not these things are real, they're not. Uh, is
besides the point. It is people's discussion of and belief in them that dates back 1500 years in the 700s yokai were written about as seeming explanations to strange phenomenon in the imperial court. Somebody sticks their leftover panda express in the fridge and then it's just miraculously gone. Nobody ate it. Like you ask everybody in the house and nobody ever ate it. Nobody's ever guilty. It must be the,
uh. And as people began to write about these strange disappearing panda express phenomenons, they didn't have panda Express back then. If you didn't know they didn't have panda Express. I don't know when panda Express started, but I guarantee you it wasn't back then. You know what else they didn't have then? Oh, uh, Seltzer, I must confess. Forgive me. Polar seltzer. Polar seltzer, I bequeathed myself to you. I am not suppping on your very good polar
bear tonight. Um, tonight I have just freshly cracked open a waterloo spiked, wrong word spiced apple seltzer. So let's hit this and quit this. Well, I'm going to tell you this right now. That is no orange vanilla. Um, that leaves polar seltzer. Don't worry, your orange vanilla reigns supreme in my heart. But they assigned something to the description of what was causing this strange phenomena and they began to refer them as these beings called yokai.
It would be centuries before the yokai themselves would be given physical descriptions, often as strange animals or element. Things that roam. Yokai were quite literally the result of folklore and legend, but also the result of fun wordplay. As stories began to be told of strange things happening, different yokai took shape. They really became a part and a standing staple of japanese folk stories and tales. Think of some of the fairy tales and folk stories you learned growing up to the japanese
people. Yokai often popped up in these, as so often some of our tropes pop up in our folk stories. When yokai make an appearance, they are often mischievous or, uh, an evil entity. And as is often the case, they also became a part of the Shinto religion in japanese belief. And from what I can tell, there are about as many yokai as there are phenomenon that you could need to describe and a various different yokai that you could assign to each phenomenon.
It should also be noted yokai are said to inhabit things, or, as is often the case, as we're going to see this week, dwell within things. When something's going to inhabit something else, it's only a matter of time before there are yokais in your toilet. Now, many of these toilet yokais are commonly referred to as quote unquote, toilet demons, which I referred to them at the top of this show. But the idea of a demon is a pretty european
idea. It is mostly our way of describing something in japanese culture that we don't really have. An equivalent for spirits or ghosts would be like the closest thing in western culture to this. But today we're going to explore some of these japanese toilet demons as we round out spook gee season here on privy. Before we begin, I must beg your apologies. I most assuredly am going to butcher the name of many japanese people this
week. If you are from Japan, if you speak Japanese, or if your culture is japanese, forgive me, uh, I'm not japanese. I don't know the language. I can't speak it. I'm just doing my best as a white bearded weirdo. Um, but the first of our japanese toilet demons is Toyer no Hanako san. Young japanese children may often find themselves faced with the opportunity for strange encounters. A theme that's going to pop up multiple
times this week. I think you'll find one of these strange encounters is with an entity known as Hanako san. Now, depending on which version of the story that you have heard, which is so true for most folktales, like, every folktale, I feel like has multiple versions which lends to its folkiness. Uh, but depending on which version of the story you listen to, Hanako san was a young girl who died in the stall of a school bathroom.
Now, depending on your source and who you asked, there's multiple ways that she is said to have died. Hanako san could have died as a result of a failure to shelter. Well, during a World War II air raid. Rough break there. Or she is the spirit, or whatever, of a girl who was murdered by a staff of the school, or a parent in the stall of the bathroom. Or she was a girl who died who, at the hands of piers'bullying, committed suicide in the bathroom stall. Whatever the reason, as the story goes,
Hanako san died in the bathroom. And so the spirit of the little girl is said to inhabit school bathrooms. As the folk story goes, the spirit dwells in the toilets of the third story bathroom, generally the girls room in japanese schools, you can tell how this schoolyard scary story gets spread like wildfire. Kids at recess, they're just itching to challenge each other to go into a bathroom and possibly get sucked into hell. You know what? It's just. It's just good fun. It's just
good playground fun. To talk to this toilet demon, Hanako san, you enter the third story toilet. Knock three times on the stall door and ask if Hanako san is present. If she is, she will reply yes. M what happens next is the hoogity boogity. Some say. When she replies yes, you see a disembodied and bloody hand appear to you that will then pull you down through the toilet into hell. Rough break. Or you possibly are eaten by a three headed lizard monster for disturbing Hanaka san's peace.
This urban legend japanese toilet spirit demon thing is weird. First, I would ask what's with the lizard? Is that the yokai here? And second, why is it so popular? Like this is one of those stories that gets picked up in japanese folklore and is propagated in japanese media. Like they've made movies and TV episodes about this type thing.
This boopki season, if you have access to a school with a third story, go to the bathroom, knock on the skull, and ask for the ghost of a deceased little girl from 70 years ago. Sounds like fun, but this is just one of many japanese toilet demons or ghosts. The next, similar to Hanako san is the air quotes toilet demon Kashima Reiko or Kashima Riku. They exist because something happened again to a schoolgirl. And that begs the question, you know what? Jumping
out of the spoopki mood here. What in the heck is going on with these japanese stories that there is so many schoolgirl schoolgirls being injured and maimed and murdered left and right? Can we not get things under control to the point where every one of these flipping stories does not have some young schoolgirl being injured or murdered? I don't understand it.
Like, at this point, you might have as good a chance at survival being a schoolgirl in a japanese folk story as you do being a person of color in any zombie movie. But in the case of Kashima Riku, the girl didn't die in the bathroom. Naverily, she died at a local train depot when she was, we'll say, fell. But does anybody ever really fall onto the tracks wherein she was cut in half by the train? The train sliced this girl in half, leaving them without legs and the spirit or
ghost or yokai or. I've honestly lost the threat of what we're even calling these, I guess demons at this point. Thus survives moving about by dragging the back part of their body a bloody half stump while scratching at the ground making a sound. M consequently, depending who you ask, they call this girl nightmare fueled thing, the tiki tiki, based on the sound that it makes as it pulls itself around.
Legend has it she wants revenge, and if she finds you, she will chase you which I imagine she isn't great at doing since she's dragging her bloody torso stump around. But what do I know? And you might hear that and you might say, well, okay, but, Hunter, this is a podcast about bathrooms. We don't just talk about every random japanese toilet schoolgirl demon that you come across on the Internet. Like, if they're not in the bathroom, what in the heck are we
even talking about them for? Well, the legend goes that Kashima Riku inhabits bathroom stalls and asks occupants through the stall divider while they're pooping, do you know where my legs are? That's a spooky one. Imagine you've sat down. You've begun the process of what I like to call taking a fat crap. And you know how you can kind of look under the stall and tell there isn't anyone dwelling there? Well, you do that. You look under the stall, no feet. You're all alone in the bathroom,
all clear in your brain. You release the pile that you've been storing. You release the sphinx, which is short for beginning pooping, and you hear, do you know where my legs are? No, thanks. A, uh, thousand times no, thanks. Like, if she doesn't like your answer, she cuts your legs off. But legend has it, if you tell her that her legs are on the maishin expressway or by calling her the masked death demon, she won't slice and dice you. How gracious.
But still, we continue as Japan provides us yet another fun bathroom demon, the akamanto. How much before we begin, how much do you want to bet? How much you want to bet the akamanto has something to do with the disembodied soul of some girl I have to read. So the Akamanto translates red cape, often because they are depicted as wearing a red cape or cloak. It's an old urban legends schoolyard tale that dates back to the 1930s.
The Akamanto has also been called the akai kami, or aokami, which means red paper, blue paper. This toilet demon appears to a person in a public or school bathroom. Here we are again, back at the japanese school. Just don't go to school in Japan. That's what I've learned. Just don't do it. And it appears to people and asks them questions such as, do you want red paper or blue paper to wipe your butt with? And here's the fun part. And by
fun, I mean awful. Either choice results in you getting killed. Like, the only way to not get killed is to ignore them and run away assumedly with your pants practically on the floor. The akamanto is said to haunt public and school bathrooms. Again, particularly likes the girls bathroom. Now, I don't like this one as much because it is said to be a male figure, and I don't like that he likes the girl's bathroom. I think that's icky. Um, and he is usually said to haunt the last stall in the line.
Now, some less murdery versions say that he gives you a choice between red paper and white paper. And depending on your choice, you get either a kiss on your dairy air or a swat on the backside. Very bad. Presumably he's coming from the toilet bowl. It's just flipping creepy. I'm going to go out on a limb. I would rather be chased by the weird torso stump girl than have this toilet dwelling dude. Just. No, this is bad. Uh, it is
usually said to appear. The akamanto is usually said to appear when you are caught without toilet paper in the stall. And if you try to bring your own to troubleshoot this problem, it'll just make it disappear. It's so unfortunate. And then it appears to you, red paper or blue paper. Next up in our tour of japanese toilet demons is a thing called the akonami. Now, the akonami is, um, a little bit different. Um, in short, this is yet another japanese yokai. And aka is a term that refers
to dead skin cells. Cells or things that have been shed from the human body, such as hair, toenails, the likes. The full name of this yokai japanese toilet demon, akanami, means scum liquor or filth liquor, you lint liquor. Uh, but it first appeared in the 1770s, and the story began as an extension of buddhist cleanliness rituals. This yokai japanese toilet demon thing is really like a bathtub demon. And essentially he goes about eating the filth at the bottom of the tub just so
bad. I, you know, dang it. Could you imagine you walk into your bathroom and you pull the curtain back and you just have this weird little creepy looking imp thing, and he's just in the bottom of your bathtub, just up all of the yuck in the bottom of you. Uh, just like, chill out, bud. Like, take a lap. And he's said to eat it again, filth liquor. Um, my question is, why can't my bloke just get in there with some scrubby bubbles or some Mr. Clean magic spray? Why has he got a lick
it? Like, this is a sick dude. He's just all up on the bathtub floor. There's flipping, like, toenails and beard hair. Stop it, you sick freak. But this guy is like that weird fish at the bottom of your aquarium who cleans the bad boy. But this one's like licking up bathroom grime. And as far as japanese toilet demons go, it's not an exhaustive list, because as I said, there's really infinite as many yokai as someone can come up with a need to explain something weird.
But these are like, I would say, the top four japanese toilet demons. But before we go, as this search went on, I stumbled across what is called a game, the Daruma san. And this is one of those spooky things that is more spookier to read about than probably actually go do. I don't know. I didn't go do it. You know what? Maybe that's. Maybe that's bonus. I don't know. We'll see. But to play Daruma san, there are steps number one. Before you go to
bed, you take off all your clothes. You just strip down to the buff, like total buff up. And then you go in the bathroom, and you fill your bathtub, and you turn off all lights. Now, here's the thing. I don't like baths, so, like, they've already lost me. I'm a big fan of the dark shower. I've shared that multiple times. Hard fan of the dark shower. But dark bath, I think it loses some of its pizzazz. But while in the dark, you sit in the,
quote, middle of the bathtub. Now, my fat deaf isn't going to fit in the middle of the bathtub. I think this is made for a skinny japanese person. Um, but you sit in the middle of the bathtub, quote, facing the faucet, or tap, at which point you close your eyes and you wash your hair. Weird. As you wash your hair, you repeat the words, daruma san fell down. Daruma san fell down. You do not stop repeating these words until you finish washing your hair. Your eyes must remain shut this whole time.
As you wash your hair, you will picture a japanese woman standing in the bathtub, presumably Daruma san herself, and she will slip and fall onto a rusty tap, gouging her eye out and thus killing her rough. After this vision, you will hear a sound coming from behind you, or feel a movement in the bath. Do not turn around or pee. Why did I get goosebumps? I don't believe any of this crap. I don't believe in this nonsense. So, like, why did I get goosebumps? Just now? You have
summoned the ghost. You feel her presence as she emerges from the bathtub. Ask out loud, why did you fall in the bathtub? You can finally get out of the bathtub. Make sure your eyes remain shut. Make sure not to slip or trip as you get out of the bath. Do not drain the water until the next morning. Shut the door behind you. It is now safe to open your eyes. Keep the water in the bathtub. Do not let it go out, and do not turn on any lights. Go to bed
now. The woman, quote unquote woman who appears to you or is said to appear to you because again, this is Halloween or nonsense, is a ghostly figure and she will follow you all day. She wears tattered and stained white clothes with black hair. She has but one eye. Her left eye is wide open and bloodshot. Her right eye is missing, leaving a bloody hollow eye socket, presumably from when she fell and impaled herself on the faucet earlier. Now the
game. Now you have begun the game that is the beginning of playing Daruma san, or whatever this thing is called. When you wake up, the game begins and your day will begin as normal until you feel the presence of the one eyed woman glancing over your right shoulder. When you turn around, she will not be there. She will get closer and closer and closer as your day goes on, but do not let her catch you. If the one eyed woman is getting too close, you should shout tamare, which means
stop. Then run away fast. This will put distance between you and the woman. You must end this game before midnight, or else she will keep stalking you and appear to you in your dreams to kill you. Fake. To end the game, you must catch a glimpse of the one eyed woman and shout, kata, which means I cut you loose while swinging your arm in a chopping motion. Think a, uh, karate swipe. The game will end and the one eyed women will follow you no more. Again. To reiterate, rules include
do not open your eyes when the ghost first appears. Do not let the one eyed woman trip you when you leave the bathtub. In other words, don't completely beef it on the wet bathtub floor with your eyes closed in the dark. By the way, like the game's. I feel like the game itself. I think I know. I think I know how Daruma san ended up with one eye. She was trying to Daruma san herself and she yoinked it and planted her flipping face right into the faucet. Do not reenter
the bathroom after you leave. Do not drain the bath until the morning, and do not let the one eyed woman catch you. Now, the website that I got this interesting information from, it says this game is very dangerous. It can get you killed when you're getting out of the bathtub. And it's important to play with
caution. Now, I'm going to go ahead and tell you that the risk you run of completing schmacking your head on the bathroom floor by trying all of these maneuvers with your eyes closed, wet, slippery in the dark is a thousand times more dangerous than the actual notion that this air quotes demon spirit is going to catch you. Do this if you want, but just be careful. Don't smack your head. Figure out how to do this and not smack your head.
The Japanese have all sorts of spooky things to have shared with us around the bathroom. They made a game, for goodness sakes. And as we close out this spoop gee season, I hope we didn't spoop gear. I don't know how to make that tense, um, but I hope it wasn't too dissettling. But this brings us to the end of Spoopki season and the end of another episode of Privy. Thank you all so much for joining us. We love that you're here. We thank you for being here. Um, your
feedback is crucial. Your, uh, sharing of the show is crucial. As we move into 2024, I want to leave you all with kind of a holiday challenge. If you listen to privy, one of the biggest things you can do to support this show is share it. And we have a website, privycast.com. If you would share the link to Privycast. It's in the thing, uh, below. Share that on social media with your friends. And as we move into 2024, we're going to try to
grow this thing. We're going to try to spread some bathroom knowledge. Stay away from the japanese weirdos. Uh, leave us a comment. Privycast@gmail.com. You can find those links at our website. Leave us a rating or review. The five star options are preferred. You can leave us a rating review on Spotify or Apple podcasts. Um, and for every rating you leave, we'll donate some money to the wounded warriors program,
reminding you to keep pooping in the free world. But that free world has not always been free. Uh, it allows us to give a little bit back to those who have given so much for us. Um, as always, we want to thank Kevin McLeod and Pottington Bear for the use of their music this week. Thanks, Kevin and Pottington. We also want to thank the Creative Commons licenses for the spoop gee season sound effects. This has been another episode of Privy. Thank you so much for listening. Thank
you all. I hope you've enjoyed your spoop key season. Own your stank. Push past your clogs. Keep pooping in the free world. And now, as always, don't forget to flush.