Imagine you are at large electronics store in Japanese otaku mecca Akihabara. Imagine you go to the bathroom and *ahem* take a dump. Imagine that there is not toilet paper in said bathroom. What would you do?
If you were self-styled anime song DJ, DJ Kacho, you’d call for help via the internet. Last week, he did just that, sending out an urgent tweet that read: “Urgent request, toilet paper in Akihabara Yodobashi Camera 3rd floor men’s restroom”.
The toilet paper arrived nearly twenty minutes later, and DJ Kacho was able to go on with the rest of his day. Twitter is good for something, getting toilet paper, for instance!
DJ課長 a.k.a 内火艇 (naika_tei) [Twitter via Foolish Gadgets via Boing Boing via Tokyo Mango][Pic]
Denaz
Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 4:41 PMlol funny… but why the hell are you guys posting it!? lolz
El Phantasmogoro
Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 4:47 PMTwitter proved to be useful for something after all! Cool!
Mr Waffle
Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 5:02 PMhaha that’s gold. And should be a lesson to anyone going to Japan- you never know if there will be toilet paper, so make sure you grab those free tissues that everybody hands out with advertisements on them!
Ben Robinson
Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 5:29 PMWhen I was a kid, we lived in Japan. Dad wanted to get a free tissue packet from this guy giving them away, but he refused because we were foreign. I liked the picture on it and was therefore sad. :(
CHILDHOOD SCARRING
pop
Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 7:34 PMReally? I thought Japanese people were polite, I went to Japan last year and i got heaps of free tissues haha,
maybe because I’m asian and I look like them :P
Lucas Brown
Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 9:33 PMThey happily gave us them when I went, but its understandable that they’d prefer not to since they get money from advertising and foreigners on average probably can’t read the text.
Mr Waffle
Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 11:54 PMI suppose it depends on the person and what it’s for, really. The people giving them out are usually just doing it for the (crappy) money so they want to offload the tissues as quickly as possible, but I wasn’t offered them occasionally.
But then, I’ve had flyers withdrawn from being offered to me in Sydney when walking around Chinatown, while my Chinese-Australian friends walking with me had them offered. So it’s certainly not just a “Japan” thing.
Dunnowhathuh
Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 6:10 PMAnd here I thought twitter was a useless waste of time.
Michael Barnes
Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 6:17 PMThats awesome! Only 20 minutes!?
Mic
Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 6:58 PMWhile I won’t say that it was pretty clever, couldn’t he have, I dunno, called the store he was in and asked the staff to bring one over? Probably would have been faster.
Thermal Ions
Friday, May 14, 2010 at 12:14 AMReminds of a recent comic on xkcd – http://xkcd.com/723/
Not to mention the news story last year:
“The Metropolitan Fire Service (MFS) in Adelaide says it is worrying that two girls lost in a stormwater drain raised the alert on a social networking site rather than ringing triple-0.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/07/2678945.htm
rpgplayer83
Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 7:52 PMMost people check before they sit down, right? Right?
Thermal Ions
Friday, May 14, 2010 at 12:15 AMYes, and I bet he now does in future.
Khuntza
Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 8:00 PMWell, he obviously had an internet device, most likely a smartphone. Why didnt he just look up the number of the store and ask an employee to bring him some TP?
Turns out Twitter is still useless.. sorry guys.
rpgplayer83
Friday, May 14, 2010 at 7:36 PMTwitter is not useless, and it’s been around for a lot longer than you know.
If you recall the messages that stream along the bottom of a News or Stocks TV program, you’ll see small messages that inform the viewer/reader. This is the same principle behind Twitter. The only problem with Twitter, is that it’s open to everyone and their boring lives and inane comments.
Mr.NiK
Saturday, May 15, 2010 at 1:56 AMHe should have went to take a dump at Sofmap in Akihabara where the toilets have inbuilt Bidets.