With their dusty dinosaur bones and yawn-inducing artwork, museums often bore the heck out of kids. That probably won’t be the case with the wild, and stinky, exhibit currently running at Tokyo’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. Welcome to the poop museum exhibit!
“Toilet!? Human Waste & Earth’s Future” is devoted to the history of toilets and all things poopy. It features tons of information about human and animal waste, in addition to a section that focuses on innovative bathrooms. A toilet from a spaceship and conceptual models are among the cool commodes on display. There’s also a “blinged-out” potty that’s covered in more than 72,000 rhinestones, and another that’s supposedly made out of gold.
But to hold kids’ interest, curators have also added tons of fun, and downright weird, features. The exhibit contains real poop from exotic animals in scent-proof plastic cases. (Young visitors are reportedly most fascinated by the panda doodie). An arts and crafts area allows visitors to make imitation poop out of clay.
There’s also a large slide shaped like a toilet. Visitors, young and old, can put on special poop-shaped hats before “flushing” themselves down it. Toilets with animated faces on their lids are scattered throughout the exhibit and talk about sanitation and good hygiene. There¹s even an all-potty chorus that sings a song called “Thanks, Toilet!”
As crazy as it all sounds, the exhibit draws attention to a serious subject that many of us in the Western world take for granted. Without toilets, clean drinking water and indoor plumbing, our lives would likely be much shorter (and a whole lot smellier)