"Butt Squirters...Why?" And Other Songs

Factual Questions
1

I am currently living in Japan. I went to college here and during that time I noticed that pretty much all advertising on the trains focussed on:

Marriage
Golf
Beer
Vitamin Drinks

The untold story always brought a glimmer to my eye.

But in the time since then, it seems that advertising has lost such stories of daily life and just has various random stuff. Except butt squirters.

You just don’t know how annoying it is to be packed in a hot, crowded train for an hour every day with your nose three inches from an add for a “Do it yourself, medical enema squirter bulb. Now 10% longer!” (Yes, they do actually endorse the length.)

I do much prefer the adds where the famous actor who gets to stand in the add has a “I can’t believe I let my agent talk me into this” face to the “I just squirted ten minutes ago and mmm, zesty” smily living-from-check-to-check model. Unfortunately I switched trains so now I am only getting mister zesty.

Anyways. So I had a few questions on this phenomenon:

  1. How does a butt squirter work as opposed to a pill. My own imagination is just envisioning that whatever is squirted is going to be travelling back downhill pretty quick, so whatever needed to be unblocked–how is it getting reached? The only thing I can think of is that perhaps the medication just causes your anus to relax…?

  2. I have never seen or heard of butt squirters outside of Japan. Admittedly I have never been particularly needy of knowing how to unblock my portal, but still I have to wonder if this is primarily a Japanese thing, or if it is just more reserved as a last-ditch-measure in the US (and Europe?) than it is here?

  3. Why the sudden advertising? I doubt it is solely to brighten my mornings. Was there a new discovery? Something new in the Japanese diet to cause mass constipation? Or did somehow butt squirters become some sort of “fad”–for instance that they eh…excite?

Anyways, I’m sure I’ll regret any and all answers. But at least I have been able to share.

2

We have such things in the US too.

3

One question down then. (Though I had assumed they would.)

4

One does hear that there is something of a constipation problem in Japan, because of all that rice. A friend who lived there for a while said ads for laxatives were everywhere, generally targeted towards women.

5

Re your question number one:

  1. You lie down on your side to prevent the downhill escape of the injected liquid, which is mostly just water, BTW.

  2. Water in the anus stimulates the colon to contract, and makes you want to pinch out a loaf.

I don’t know why water just inside the anus has this effect, but maybe it’s because the primary job of the large intestine is to absorb water from the solid waste passing through.

Maybe the presence of water in the very last bit of the colon triggers the body to want ro expell the waste immediatley, because if there’s so much water remaining **that late ** in the digestive process, the body must be over-hydrated and it’s best to just get rid of this stuff now.

Maybe MtQ has a more elgant explanation.

6

I would also accept a more **elegant ** explanation.

And from QtM, instead of this MtQ quack … :smack: