what's it say, what's it for????

[Dhee]

A teeny bit off the subject - and this might be old news for you old FG-hands, but -- what's it say, what's it for????

[oyajikun]

I can't read it but I'm guessing it's used for napping train passengers.

[deltaco]

It is photoshopped! It's obvious.

[bejiita]

Yeah, it's practically prehistoric "news" by internet standards. It's from Kenji Kawakami's 101 Unuseless Japanese Inventions: The Art of Chindogu. And yes, I think it's for sleeping on trains and keeping your head from falling on the passengers beside you.

And more recently seen on the Dave Attell show. The inventor is in the background here with his wife.

[mr. sparkle]

It says, "Please attach 2 small flags to my helmet - one U.S. and one Japanese: I am going to the PONGI Party where everyone dresses like Rob Pongi."

[Mulboyne]

The sign says "I'm taking a nap...can you give me a nudge when we get to..[put your station name here]"

[mr. sparkle]

Actually, one of the "Young Dudes" suggested that you have a PONGI event where everyone dresses as a different PONGI and whoever has the photo with the best looking babe wins!

What a killer idea!

Out of the flames of internet bulletin boards, we forge katana!

Join us!

[kotatsuneko]

there was 2 books on chindogu in english about 8 years ago, great stuff!

[maraboutslim]

The sign says "I'm taking a nap...can you give me a nudge when we get to..[put your station name here]"

Well, in the photo the station is written in big bold kanji at the bottom: Nishi Okikubo

[mr. sparkle]

Or is it Nishi Ogi-Kubo? On the Chuo Line?

[maraboutslim]

Or is it Nishi Ogi-Kubo? On the Chuo Line?

oops. sorry for the typo. you are right it is ogi not oki!

[Taro Toporific]

For Every Predicament, a Thingamajig to Solve It
NYTimes.com > BOOKS OF THE TIMES. March 21, 2005
'The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions'
By Kenji Kawakami
Illustrated. 303 pages. W. W. Norton. $12.95.
'Patently Ridiculous'
By Richard Ross
Illustrated. 160 pages. Plume. $12.

We can all rattle off a list of inventions that have altered the course of human history - the wheel, the plow, the printing press, the steam engine, the telegraph, the airplane, the computer. But for every Gutenberg and Alexander Graham Bell, there are innumerable people like Ron Popeil (of Veg-O-Matic fame): inventors who don't really change the world, but just fill it up with gadgets, widgets, thingamabobs and doohickeys. They see electric light and dream of the Clapper sound-activated on-off switch. They wonder why the toaster oven has never been rotisserized. They hook a small umbrella to a can of beer, et voilà - the Beerbrella, to keep the sun off your brewski.
In Japan, the designer Kenji Kawakami promotes wacky gadgetry as an art he calls "chindogu" - literally "weird tools," but more humorously translated as "unuseless inventions." Mr. Kawakami and his followers create exquisitely goofy devices that are not entirely useless, but you would not call them necessary, either. "The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions" presents some 200 of these Rube Goldbergian contraptions most of them collected previously in two of Mr. Kawakami's books from the mid-1990s........more...