Future Tech: Of course Japan has built a pregnancy simulator

This is why people think you're weird, Japan. Get back to creating world-class consumer electronics and less of the pregnancy simulators.

By Emmet Purcell

We'd wager that the awful mid-1990s Arnold Schwarzenegger 'comedy' Junior was a smash hit in Japan and only now have their oddest scientists manage to recreate the implausible 'man gets pregnant' plotline to the tiniest detail.

How else to explain the Kanagawa Institute of Technology's pregnancy simulation system?

The system was debuted at the Tokyo Game Show last month and requires men to wear a jacket which contains touch sensors air actuators, a water bag and rubber balloons.

Rather creepily, the abdomen will actually grow while being worn and the fictional fetus can actually be seen on a monitor. Seriously Japan...?

“Pregnancy usually lasts 10 months and ten days, but with this system, the abdomen reaches full-term size in two minutes," say the perverted geniuses behind the device.

"There are already systems that use a jacket where the abdomen swells, but with this system, the user can experience the baby kicking as well.”

“The effects of the baby kicking and the breasts enlarging are achieved by using balloons. The balloons are inflated by air from a compressor, putting pressure on the abdomen. A baby doesn’t just hit and kick, it also moves from side to side."

"When Mom says happily, “The baby kicked! It kicked!”, the father can’t feel that," they continue (why didn't anyone ask them to stop talking?)

"So we’d like to attach this kind of device on both the father’s and the mother’s side, to quickly communicate to the father the experience of the fetal movements felt by the mother.”

Thanks, but no thanks Japan. Next time you find yourselves desperate for help following a Godzilla attack, we'll remember that you invented the pregnancy simulator first.

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