Human Washing Machine
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Headline on NDTV, Nov. 29, 2025: "Japan Unveils Human Washing Machine, Now You Can Get Washed Like Laundry."
From François Lang, who sent this item to me:
I initially parsed this headline as a human [washing machine]; only after looking at the photo did I realize it was a [human washing] machine. Another headline that would have been made a lot clearer via simple hyphen!
Selected readings
"Quadrilingual Washlet Instructions" (8/22/08)
"Japanese hi-tech toilet instructions" (1/19/17)
"Advanced mission" (6/19/21)
…and there are many other entertaining appliances for the bathroom.
"Are you OK?" (11/2/25)
Laura Morland said,
December 4, 2025 @ 12:56 am
For the curious, here's how the machine-that-washes-humans works:
https://youtu.be/AfNrAIITDi0?si=53f0Ay69TFb33qZz
Julian said,
December 4, 2025 @ 6:07 am
But there's no tumble dryer….
Philip Taylor said,
December 4, 2025 @ 6:43 am
"Tumble drier", Sir ? What's wrong with a mangle, a clothes line and wooden clothes pegs ? If they were good enough for my grandmother, they're good enough for today !
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
December 4, 2025 @ 8:25 am
(1) Doesn't seem very ecologically friendly.
(2) Philip Talyor said: "If they were good enough for my grandmother, they're good enough for today !"
–I find myself saying that a lot these days.
Robert Coren said,
December 4, 2025 @ 10:10 am
My reaction to "Now you can get washed like laundry" is "And I would want to do that why, exactly?"
@Philip Taylor: I see you subtly "correcting" Julian's spelling of "dryer", but I'm inclined to say that that is the correct spelling for a device that dries, whereas the spelling with an i is reserved for the comparative of "dry".
François Lang said,
December 4, 2025 @ 10:24 am
Really sounds like a solution in search of a problem.
No way in the world I would get into one of those!
Steve B said,
December 4, 2025 @ 10:52 am
François, I suspect the main use cases involve the elderly. The Japanese demographic crisis is driving lots of automation aimed at elder care.
Victor Mair said,
December 4, 2025 @ 11:21 am
They are probably quite expensive and will be purchased mainly by nursing homes (and very wealthy elderly folks).
Philip Taylor said,
December 4, 2025 @ 12:38 pm
« I see you subtly "correcting" Julian's spelling of "dryer" » — not intentionally, Robert, that was just the variant that my fingers chose, and it was only after posting that I realised that I had unintentionally changed the spelling. At that point I though it best to see whether "drier" in this context is attested, and found that it is — see https://houseofisabella.co.uk/pages/tumble-drier, for example.
MattF said,
December 4, 2025 @ 12:57 pm
Is there a spin cycle?
Julian said,
December 5, 2025 @ 4:32 pm
'tumble dryer' vs 'tumble drier'
When I wrote my comment above I wasn't thinking consciously about spelling.
It came out as 'tumble dryer'. Not 'drier' as in 'dry, drier, driest'.
On reflection I see (maybe, possibly, in some way that I couldn't be bothered thinking through completely) an analogy with the discussion of headless compounds in Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct (Penguin, p143): the plural of 'sabre-tooth' (a kind of tiger) is 'sabre-tooths', not 'sabre-teeth'.
I once heard friend who was thinking of buying a new car say 'I test-drived it yesterday.'
Jarek Weckwerth said,
December 5, 2025 @ 5:12 pm
When I click the link, the all-seeing gods of Google gave me an ad for a dishwasher first. Mighty confusing.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
December 5, 2025 @ 5:12 pm
*clicked
Anthony said,
December 5, 2025 @ 6:13 pm
I was expecting something like a car-wash, with large revolving brushes. Ouch!
Robert S. Coren said,
December 6, 2025 @ 10:53 am
Re "test-drived" (which seems like a barbarism to me, but never mind): US sports slang includes the verb "grind" (meaning, approximately, "work arduously at something that might be expected to be easy"), and in the mouths of sportscasters everywhere its past tense is "grinded". (This may be influenced by the existence of the present-tense verb "ground", meaning "hit the ball on the ground".)
Relatedly, announcers used to (correctly, in my view) use "flied" for the past tense of "fly (out)" = to hit the ball to fielder on the fly (without the ball touching the ground), and I recall about 30 years ago a rookie announcer who used "flew" saying the next day that he'd gotten a correction from a viewer. Nowadays they all say "flew".