Amazing Japanese Inventions

I really enjoy reading the news in Japan and keeping up-to-date on all the amazing or wild and crazy inventions that are constantly popping up in the headlines. The Japanese people pride themselves on their technology and constant mission to make their lifestyle a lot more convenient. A lot of their ideas inspire many strange but popularly used practical household items. Perhaps if you take a look at some of them, you might find one that can make your everyday routine a lot less mundane and much more convenient.

Showering in a Suit

Well… you don’t actually have to be in the suit in order for this process to be put into effect, and it isn’t necessary for achieving the desired results, but if you do feel the need to wear the suit into the shower to test it out it probably won’t do any harm – to either you or the suit. After all, the promotional ad for this new suit that has been designed by Konaka Co. Ltd. to be washed in the shower shows a man in a business suit doing just that. It’s quite an eye-catching picture, depicting this average salaryman casually standing beneath a showerhead in full suit attire, including matching socks, with the spray hitting both him and his suit full blast.

In Japan, where the working population are referred to as hataraki-bachi (worker bees), it is commonly understood that working overtime occurs more often than not and is to be expected. A good percentage of workers, office or otherwise, also find themselves working a six-day workweek. Being relocated to an office far from home and having to commute long distances or live in two different cities – one to live in during the workweek, and the other for visiting family on the weekends – is not an alien concept to Japan. It happens frequently, adding to the exhausted state of many of the hard working men and women that barely manage to find the time to eat dinner at night, never mind do anything else. Needless to say, there doesn’t tend to be a spare moment at night to take the suit to the dry cleaners to be washed for the following day. Even when there is, quite a good number of people only have one suit and find the repeated visit to the dry cleaners to be pretty expensive. Having it ready for the following morning is also a big challenge. Konako Co. took all of these problems into consideration when creating their newest suit – The Shower Clean Suit – a suit that can not only be cleaned in the shower, but also requires no ironing whatsoever. What an incredibly bright idea!

Konaka Co. designed a material that would allow for water to easily remove dirt from between the fibers by combining wool with water-soluble fibers, successfully creating a suit that is not only shower washable, but also lightweight and breathable. Anyone with a showerhead can very quickly and easily wash their suit after a hard day’s work and leave it hanging to dry for a few hours. For the good majority of people who only get around six hours of sleep every night, this suit will be dry and ready for you in the morning.

How to wash a Konaka Co. suit

The instructions are so simple and easy to follow that even the most exhausted suit-clad person won’t have any difficulty getting it right. First you’ll want to adjust the water temperature of your shower to a warm 40 degrees Celsius. Then, hang your suit up – both the jacket and pants – on a hanger inside-out. Using the spray from the showerhead, direct it at the suit and shower it from top to bottom for about two to three minutes. Afterwards, reverse the suit so that it is now right side out and continue for another two or three minutes on the other side. If necessary, you can even use some ordinary bath soap to remove grease stains. To dry it, just hang it in a spot that is going to get a lot of fresh air or proper ventilation. It’ll be ready to go in approximately six hours.

Not only is this suit a gem when it comes to cleanliness and convenience, it also remains wrinkle free and crisp looking for your next important business meeting or day at work. And as an added bonus, it is completely environmentally friendly because it doesn’t require any chemicals in order to clean it. This suit will definitely appeal to people in need of a more convenient and cheaper suit that requires little maintenance as well as those of us who are eco-friendly.

Rice cookers of the future

It had to happen. My rice cooker had been looking so sad and rebellious lately, burning the bottom of the white rice so that it came out looking like cookies ‘n cream, and occasionally bubbling up into a gooey something that didn’t look nor smell like rice. Unfortunately, it was about time to have the old contraption replaced by something from this decade so that meant shopping.

I’ve honestly never looked at rice cookers much, either in Canada or Japan, because I never had a need to. My first rice cooker was a present from my mother, which I promptly re-gifted back to her when I moved to Japan, and my second was probably a gift from my husband’s mother to him… quite a number of years ago. It was bound to go sooner or later considering how my husband can’t remember exactly when he acquired it. Meaning, a long, long time ago. I can remember glancing at rice cookers in Canada while shopping for useful family Christmas presents in the kitchen appliances section and only noticing two or three different models on display. Rice cookers aren’t incredibly popular in Canada, not to the extent that they are in Japan anyway.

I’ve been living in Japan for a good number of years now so rice has become a common staple for both lunch and dinner meals. Being without a rice cooker for a day or two is like suffering through a power blackout. So, the day that my rice cooker died was the day that I made my way over to Yodobashi Camera to buy a new one. I honestly don’t know what I expected to find when I hit the rice cooker section. And yes, there is an entire section devoted to rice cookers. Maybe ten models at the very most, not the rows and rows that I stumbled upon. Every major electronics manufacturer has at least two or three rice cooker models, and there are quite a number of brand names involved. There are models by Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Sanyo, Tiger, National, Panasonic, Zojirushi, and Hitachi. Those are only the names that I noticed and there are probably more than that.

Choosing a new rice cooker

This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Not only do you have to filter through the popular brand names to choose a rice cooker, but you also have to think carefully about what you want your rice cooker to do for you. In Japan nowadays, the rice cooker’s most basic function is to cook rice. It’s become something of a standard for them to perform additional functions that have absolutely nothing to do with rice.

When I went shopping for my new rice cooker, all I was thinking about was getting one that would serve two people and perhaps come in an attractive trendy color and design. Little did I know that rice cookers are expected to do a whole lot more than what they had been doing up until a little while ago. The Toshiba rice cooker that I bought is very compact and sleek looking in a pleasant rich brown color. It cooks rice in several different modes, the easiest being the fast cook mode. On top of having a menu to select the type of rice that you want to cook (like white rice, washed, unwashed etc.), it also includes the option for boiling eggs, baking bread, steaming sponge cake, making tofu and okayu – this is a kind of rice porridge with added vegetables, meat, and whatever else you feel like dropping into it. These are only the basic selectable options that I happened to notice. The rice cooker came with a manual (that I have a bad habit of bypassing whenever I buy a new electronic device) and a separate cookbook listing the near limitless possibilities of what you can make in this particular rice cooker. Pasta sauce may or may not have been on that list but I’ve already tried it, and the sponge cake, and was amazed at the results.

Why are Japanese rice cookers so versatile?

Thanks to the technology that allows the rice cookers to maintain perfect temperature control, cooking just about anything that your imagination dictates becomes a piece of cake. According to whatever dish you intend to cook, the temperature adjusts to create a suitable environment for whatever is inside the rice bowl. And because the temperature remains constant within the bowl, anything that is cooked inside is cooked evenly and consistently. Rice cookers of the past (like the one that I sent on its way to the recycle depot a few weeks ago) relied on a heater that was positioned below the bowl in order to heat the contents, making it slightly easy to burn the bottom of the rice. It also allowed the bottom portion of the rice to cook quicker than the top, resulting in uneven cooked rice. Now the newer rice cookers in Japan use Induction Heating, a method of heating that utilizes electromagnetism to heat the bowl evenly throughout.

Another reason why rice cookers have evolved into multi-cookers is because of the way the rice bowls inside the cookers are made. Most of them now have special coatings which vary depending on how much money you want to spend. They are coated with highly-conductive copper, silver, diamond, and infrared technology that won’t peel off into your rice like the archaic models of the past had a tendency of doing. With the combined sophisticated bowls and the new heating technology, it’s no wonder that rice cookers are now serving as pressure cookers and steamers.

Rice cooker menu ideas

Like I’ve already mentioned, cooking pasta sauces inside the rice cooker works really well because of the pressurized environment. The flavors are locked in and have nowhere to escape to so you get an excellent sauce without having to keep an eye on it or simmer it for hours. A friend of mine recommended that I use the rice cooker for making curry or stew for that exact same reason. She claims that the beef retains all of its moisture and juicy flavor despite being boiled up for about an hour inside the rice cooker. The stews are probably the easiest things to make because you can basically throw in all the ingredients and let the rice cooker do all the work.

Other ideas that I’ve come across include steamed dumplings, either the har gow (round steamed shrimp dumplings) or typical Japanese styled gyoza (creased meat dumplings that are usually fried). You can also make bread rolls or cakes or melon buns. Since all the new rice cookers come with built-in clocks and timers, you can conveniently time the completion of your bread or cake to finish baking for breakfast or tea time. Soups do well in rice cookers as well and cook in a fraction of the time that they would on the stove. In the winter if you’re craving something warm and traditional, you can also make some porridge in the rice cooker, making sure to put the timer on the night before so you can sleep in longer the following morning. If you’re feeling adventurous and want to try your hand at tofu, the cooking part is all taken care of for you.

There are many more things that you can prepare in a rice cooker that probably hadn’t occurred to you before. I know that I never would’ve considered putting soup into my rice cooker before surfing around the rice cooker websites to check out the possibilities. But now that I know what is possible, I think that it’s time to try the impossible. I wonder if my rice cooker also makes pizza…?