Categories
Gadgets

Chindōgu 珍道具 – The Japanese art of useless (Not always) inventions

Chindōgu 珍道具 (珍: rare, 道具: tool) is a Japanese art of inventing original devices that might help you with a very concrete purpose. The problem is that most of the times their purpose is so narrow that they are almost useless. One of the most famous chindōgu is this fan that can be attached to your chopsticks in order to cool noodles before entering your mouth. This chindōgu fan is useful if you are nekojita (Sensible to burning your tongue while eating)

An interesting fact is that the selfie-stick was invented by the Japanese in 1995 and at the very beginning it was a chindōgu. It appeared featured in a chindōgu title “101 useless inventions”.

I while ago I had the honor to meet Dr Nakamatsu, one of the most prolific Japanese inventors ever. He is also very creative when it comes to creating chindōgu. In this picture we are testing one of his last prototypes to attach smartphones to your wrist so you don’t have to continuously retrieve it from your pocket.

Categories
Advertising Gadgets

Kunoichi – The Female Ninjas Of Dynabook

“Kunoichi” くノ一 is the Japanese word for female ninja. In the following pictures you can see several Kunoichi in the latest advertising campaign of Toshiba. With this advertising campaign Toshiba tries to highlight the flexibility of its new Dynabook Kira L93, which can be used as a laptop or as a tablet, thus resembling the flexibility of the Kunoichi.

Toshiba kunoichi

Toshiba kunoichi

Toshiba kunoichi

Toshiba kunoichi

Toshiba kunoichi

Toshiba kunoichi

Toshiba kunoichi

ninja8

ninja9

Toshiba kunoichi

Toshiba kunoichi

Toshiba kunoichi

Toshiba kunoichi

Toshiba kunoichi

More photos at Livedoor

Categories
Gadgets

Brain Controlled Tail

Neurowear, the company that created the cat ears controlled with your mind, has done it again and has created an artificial tail that wags according to the emotional state of the user. As of now it’s only a prototype but it seems they want to launch a real product to the market in the future.

Besides wagging, it is also able to geotag places according to the “happiness level” of the user, the video explains it very well:

Via @gchicco