Blog reader Mayur Misra forwarded us a chain email featuring ads for various Japanese products with the subject line “Only in Japan.”
Are such products too weird to take hold in the U.S.? Remember that the Walkman, the great cassette-tape ancestor of portable CD players and iPods, also started out as one of those wacky Japanese inventions.
Frompocketcalculatorshow.com
During this economic downturn, might the success of a strange — some say embarrassing — U.S. invention, the Snuggie, be an indication that people are more open to a quirky product if it saves them money (heating bills, in the case of the Snuggie)? At a time when fewer people can afford housekeepers, maybe this is the next recession must-have:
and 
. You can also watch it on 
This whole genre has been around for ever. It even has a name, Chindogu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chind%C5%8Dgu
Here’s my question about this: Do lonely gay men buy the Boyfriend Pillow?
the fact that such a thing as a ‘must-have’ exists is, in itself, embarrassing. but, those huggy pillows do look awfully cuddly. i place complete blame for this recession on the axis of evil – sharper image, brookstone and the silly catalog you peek at while flying. i could have paid for my mortgage if i didn’t throw down 5k for a massage chair. oh well, you live and you sort of learn. i wonder what the equivalent japanese catalog is … nonsensical fun, surely.
Thanks kap, you posted what I came here to post and provided a good information link.
To recap, most or all of these things are most likely jokes. The Walkman was in no way meant to be a joke, it was developed as a serious product.
O MY GOD! how weird are these products, i still can’t stop laughing.
A perusal of the US Patent Office applications would yield an equally bizarre array of “solutions” to someone’s most vexing problems. Japan has no “patent” on absurdity.
“Thus, ChindÅgu are sometimes described as ‘unuseless’ – that is, they cannot be regarded as ‘useless’ in an absolute sense, since they do actually solve a problem; however, in practical terms, they cannot positively be called ‘useful.’”
An important distinction. “Only in Japan” assumes that they actually are popular in Japan. But if you’ve ever been to Japan, you know that it’s not a country of people running around with crazy contraptions on their heads. Most Japanese people would be even more embarrassed to use any of these products than the typical Westerner would be. So if these inventions take off in any way anywhere, it will only be as jokes in blogs, magazines and books.
What I would like to see more of (though of course I enjoy hearing about entertaining unuseless inventions) are simple contraptions that make life surprisingly easier. Devices to go along with “The Power of Small” way of thinking.
I do see these types of products shown a lot, but as a Japaense american, i’d like to point out these are seen as weird and bizarre products in Japan as well–and are hardly common place. Do more strange producs see the light of day in Japan than in other places? perhaps, but I hate when people misinterpret these types of thinegs as if they were common.