ガジェット

Gadgets

Improving the everyday

Japanese gadgets for home and personal use are primarily about convenience, cleanliness, and engineering a solution to common problems, but they’re often imbued with a spirit of fun. While outsiders might see items such as Thanko’s full-face Pollen Blocker 2 visor-hood as “wacky,” the Japanese prefer to describe them as “Galapagos” products. These unusual, homegrown technologies often struggle to thrive overseas, making them as unique to Japan as the species that evolved on the Galapagos are to that Pacific archipelago.

Amazing Appliances

Appliance manufacturers in Japan are always chasing the cutting edge while dealing with intense domestic competition. From the humble kotatsu, a low table with a heating element for relaxing in winter, to advanced induction-heating rice cookers, automatic shoe-deodorizing machines, body-scanning bathroom scales, and steam inhalers designed to mitigate allergies, Japanese homes are full of surprising products to assist with everyday life.

public hygiene

Revolutionized by TOTO’s Washlet series launched in 1980, Japanese toilets have functions you’ve never dreamed of, all in the name of cleanliness and comfort. Sometimes featuring dozens of buttons on their control panels, they can do everything from automatically opening lids to warming seats to cleansing and drying your posterior to shooting a mist over the bowl after every use, all while scrimping on water use. No visit to Japan is complete without hearing the noise of Otohime— audio functions or devices that play recordings of toilet flushes or running water to protect people’s modesty while using the bathroom.

Be More Japan Gadgets

Image

D Washlet toilets are controlled by a panel next to the seat.

photo fun

Commemorate your time in Japan with a trip to one of the country’s many purikura. These elaborate photo booths allow you to take pictures with friends and then embellish them with a wide variety of automatic digital edits and additions before the final sticker photos are printed; popular themes include cosmetics and fashion. As edit functions have become increasingly sophisticated, booths have expanded in size, with some as large as a compact car. Introduced in the 1990s and popularized by J-pop idol group SMAP, purikura are found in arcade centers throughout Japan and are particularly popular with teenage girls. Dedicated purikura shops sometimes also offer costumes for dress-up photos.

Image

D Purikura are a ubiquitous part of Japanese youth culture.

Be More Japan Gadgets

Chindogu

The undisputed king of off-the-wall gadgets is Kenji Kawakami, creator of countless Chindogu (“strange tool”) inventions. Designed to make people think and perhaps laugh, they include head-mounted toilet paper dispensers for allergy sufferers, portable crosswalks for pedestrians in a rush, and subway straps attached to toilet plungers for commuters needing something to hang onto. Kawakami describes them as a form of art.

Be More Japan Gadgets

Image

D Left to right: Vending machines can be found even in the middle of the countryside; accessible any time of day, vending machines are the epitome of convenience; drinks are one of the most common items for sale.

complete convenience

From train stations to rice paddies to the slopes of Mount Fuji, vending machines can be found just about anywhere in Japan. With one of the highest vending-machine densities in the world, about one per every 30 people, they provide essential products to many Japanese. In a densely populated country with expensive, limited space for retail shops, vending machines are prized as convenient and always available.

Future-Facing

Aside from their variety, vending machines in Japan deploy sophisticated technology. Developed by JR East Water Business, Acure vending machines possess a number of smart features. Found in Shinagawa Station and at other spots around Tokyo, they have touch-panel displays, are programmed to use data to estimate users’ age and gender to suggest suitable drinks, and can be used to gift drinks to friends via a smartphone app; they also accept smart card cashless payments, unlike many other machines.

To cope with power failures and other service disruptions amid Japan’s frequent earthquakes, vending machines are also becoming more resilient. Some machines can operate on battery power or by a hand crank during blackouts, while others will dispense drinks free of charge during disasters. The 2011 earthquake that devastated northern Japan affected electricity supplies and sparked a rethink of power use by vending machines. Vacuum-insulated vending machines, for instance, can go without cooling their drinks for 11 hours. Billed as the most energy-saving machines in Japan, Suntory’s Eco Active Machines use half the electricity of vendors with standard heat-pump technology. Energy used by all machines was down 62 percent in 2017 compared to 2005.

Image

D Vending machines provide refreshments for hikers at the top of Mount Fuji.

Everything but the Kitchen Sink

Vending machines for coin lockers and tickets are a common sight, but other items you might come across range from batteries, umbrellas, and eyeglasses to floral bouquets, Shinto amulets, and underwear. Particularly popular are gachapon, which dispense capsule toys. Named for the sound of the dispensing mechanism, they spit out every trinket you can imagine, from miniature Tokyo Towers and Godzilla to fake sushi and bonnets for cats. One hit gacha is Koppu no Fuchiko, a female office worker in all kinds of odd poses, which has sold over 20 million units.

Nearly 60 percent of vending machines in Japan sell drinks, including beer, sake, milk, and green tea. Food is a smaller sales category, but it features some arresting items. You can buy bananas, bags of rice, onigiri (rice balls), natto (fermented soybeans), takoyaki (octopus balls), pizza, hotdogs and, of course, instant noodles. If that isn’t unusual enough, head down to Kumamoto Prefecture, where you can buy chocolate-covered grasshoppers and other insect snacks.

Be More Japan Gadgets

invented in japan

Karaoke machine

Invented by musician Daisuke Inoue, the karaoke machine sparked a global craze.

alt image

VHS

Pioneered by JVC, the VHS triumphed in the 1980s as the format of choice for home video systems

alt image

laptop

Epson’s trailblazing HX-20 featured a full-size keyboard, LCD display and even a printer.

Selfie stick

Initially named the “extender stick”, the first patented selfie stick was released in Japan in the 1980s.

alt image

calculator

The first handheld battery-powered electronic calculator was Canon’s Pocketronic.

walkman

Sony’s Walkman revolutionised the way people experienced music and sold an astonishing total of 200 million units.

alt image
..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset
3.95.2.54