JAPANESE FIRMS MARKET HUMAN-SIZE FRIDGE

Daily Mail

 

Now that's what you call a cool idea! Japanese firms are selling 'fridges for humans' that chill you almost instantly – but they come at a hefty price

By WILIAM HUNTER, SENIOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

Published: 07:41 EDT, 21 July 2026 | Updated: 08:29 EDT, 21 July 2026

 

With sweltering heatwaves becoming a regular summer occurrence, two Japanese firms have launched a very unusual way to beat the heat.

 

The Do Hiemon 'personal cooling box' looks just like the dozens of other vending machines found lining a typical Japanese street.

 

But this is actually the first 'fridge for humans', and is designed to cool you almost instantly.

 

Customers simply step inside the stainless steel box, measuring 7ft (2.13 m) tall and 3.9ft (1.19 m) deep, to feel a powerful jet of cooling air.

 

The inside of the human fridge is kept at a crisp 15°C (59°F) while a blast of air chilled to 5°C (41°F) is blown onto the customer's head, neck, shoulders, and back.

 

SDRS, a vending machine maker and the fridge's manufacturer, says that the user will feel significantly cooler after as little as five minutes inside the device.

 

Meanwhile, spending 10 minutes in the container will ease the symptoms of heat exhaustion, according to the company.

 

However, this cool innovation comes at a hefty price, with each unit coming in at £6,862 (1.5 million Yen).

 

This innovation comes as Japan faces a brutal summer heatwave, with temperatures climbing to 38°C (100°F) and officials issuing heatstroke warnings.

 

The idea behind the Do Hiemon human fridge is to give users a quick blast of cooling so that they can get on with their day in as short a time as possible.

 

The machine is even equipped with an automatic timer that shuts off after 20 minutes to prevent overcooling.

 

Trusco, the device's distributor, says that its personal cooling box is the first device to achieve 'full body cooling'.

 

The company claims that this means they can chill the body faster than conventional air conditioning methods or fans.

 

Likewise, the compact design also means that the Do Hiemon could be much cheaper to run.

 

Trusco says that the electricity demands are so low that it costs just 7p (16 yen) per hour to operate – more energy efficient than a conventional air conditioner.

 

Placed on wheels and operable from a conventional power outlet, the human fridge has been designed to deploy quickly and easily, even out in the open.

 

Its inventors say that the box could be deployed on construction sites and farms to give workers an escape from the brutal heat.

 

Alternatively, the box on wheels might find a home in malls, schools, festivals, sporting facilities, or anywhere else that people need a quick cool down.

 

Since going on sale in April, the human fridge has already proven popular in Japan and has popped up in several public places.

 

On social media, tech fans have praised this thoughtful invention, with one commenter dubbing it 'a brilliant adaptation tool for factory workers.'

 

Another commenter on X wrote: 'This is needed everywhere around the globe.'

 

'Japan cares about their hardworking people,' chimed in one enthusiastic fan.

 

While one added: 'I need one of these in Florida.'

 

However, SDRS and Trusco haven't confirmed whether they will make the device available outside of Japan.

 

This comes as Japan finds itself grappling with a wave of extreme heatwaves that have caused over 1,500 deaths from heatstroke per year on average, according to Japan's Central Environment Council.

 

In 2024, heat–related deaths hit a record high, with 2,160 fatalities recorded due to heatstroke.

 

That coincided with the nation's hottest summer since record–keeping began in 1898, as average temperatures climbed 2.36°C (4.25°F) above average.

 

Temperatures even nudged above 40°C (104°F) on nine days between June and August, setting a new national record of 41.8°C (107.2°F) in the city of Isesaki.

 

Currently, Japan is facing yet another heatwave that has already killed six and sent 4,500 people to hospital, according to the Japanese fire and disaster management agency.

 

WHAT ARE THE BEST WAYS TO KEEP COOL DURING A HEATWAVE?

 

The NHS has a number of tips for keeping cool during bouts of unusually hot weather.

 

- Drink plenty of fluids

 

- Open windows or other vents around the home

 

- Shade or cover windows exposed to direct sunlight

 

- Grow plants inside and outside to provide shade and help cool the air

 

- Turn off lights and electrical equipment that isn't in use

 

- Take a break if your home gets too hot: Head to a nearby air-conditioned building like a library or supermarket

AH: Reminds me of this from "The Simpsons."

JAPANESE WOMEN COMPLAIN ABOUT MEN'S LEG HAIR

Daily Mail

 

Women complain of 'leg hair harassment' after men in Tokyo encouraged to wear shorts during heatwave

By KRISTINA WEMYSS, GENERAL NEWS REPORTER

Published: 08:56 EDT, 22 July 2026 | Updated: 12:44 EDT, 22 July 2026

 

Office workers have complained of ‘leg hair harassment’ - with women appalled at the sight of men wearing shorts.

 

Employees in Tokyo, Japan, have been told to ditch their usual suit and tie in favour of casual clothes including T-shirts and trainers amid heatstroke alerts.

 

But while men are encouraged to wear shorts to the office, etiquette dictates that women are still expected to wear tights.

 

And some have complained of ‘sunehara’ - or leg hair harassment - taking offence at the sight of their male colleagues’ calves.

 

A survey last month found that almost 53.5 per cent of workers were opposed to wearing shorts in the summer, while 46.5 per cent were in favour of the new recommendation.

 

The main concerns for both genders, according to Gorilla Clinic, which conducted the research, were body shape and body hair.

 

There were significantly more women who responded to the survey than men, which, the clinic suggested, could indicate that women felt more strongly about seeing bare legs than the men.

 

Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike introduced the clothing guidance as part of a ‘Cool Biz’ initiative in April.

 

Noboru Watanabe, environment spokesman for the Tokyo Metropolitan government, said: ‘We want to give people more options in the severe heat, not tell them what to wear.'

 

He told the BBC: ‘There should be no issue as long as the work attire is not offensive to anyone.’

 

Japan’s weather agency has forecast two days of ‘kokushobi’, meaning ‘brutally hot day’, with temperatures expected to reach 40C in Kumagaya, north of Tokyo.

 

Authorities urged residents to use air conditioning liberally, hydrate regularly and avoid spending long hours outdoors

 

In recent years more Japanese workers - particularly those working at startups and tech companies - have started to wear casual clothes.

 

But the government’s recommendation this year has made it more socially acceptable.

DON'T THROW AWAY DRYER SHEETS YOU FIND IN YOUR MAILBOX

New York Post

 

People keep finding dryer sheets in their mailboxes — here is why you shouldn’t touch it

By Mary K. Jacob

Published July 22, 2026, 3:17 p.m. ET

 

A dryer sheet tucked between the bills and the junk mail sounds like a prank. It isn’t, and tossing it in the trash could be a mistake.

 

Across the country, homeowners are opening their mailboxes to find a Bounce or Snuggle sheet sitting inside, left there deliberately by their letter carrier.

 

The practice has quietly persisted for years, and it comes down to one thing, keeping wasps out.

 

Mailboxes make ideal real estate for stinging insects. They’re dark, sheltered from weather, and often go untouched for hours at a stretch, which is exactly what a paper wasp looks for when scouting a nesting spot.

 

“Insects are always going to be looking for food, water, and harborage,” Brandon Runyon, an entomologist with Swat Pest Management told Realtor.com.

 

He added that pests gravitate toward wherever those conditions exist, and mailboxes check every box. Runyon said he has personally discovered paper wasp nests inside his own mailbox.

 

The dryer sheet trick traces back to a 2010 study that tested Bounce’s “Outdoor Fresh Scent” sheets on fungus gnats, an experiment inspired by gardeners who claimed tucking a sheet in their pocket kept bugs away. Researchers found the sheets held up as a repellent, at least against gnats.

 

Runyon said the science lines up with what’s inside the sheets. Dryer sheets are loaded with linalool and beta citronella, compounds that occur naturally in lavender, mint, and rose geranium, plants long known to keep insects at bay.

 

Manufacturers use those same compounds to give laundry products, lotions, and candles their floral scent, pleasant to people, repellent to bugs.

 

Runyon was careful to note the fungus gnat study doesn’t prove sheets work on wasps specifically, since little formal research exists on that front. Still, postal workers keep swapping the tip on social media, and local news segments keep running it every summer.

 

Scent may matter more than the sheet itself. A 2015 study found that Victoria’s Secret Bombshell perfume fended off mosquitoes for a full two hours after being sprayed on, while some fruity fragrances appear to draw insects in rather than push them away. One online commenter swore by Dove bar soap as a substitute.

 

But Runyon isn’t ready to crown the dryer sheet a real solution. He said the concentration of linalool and beta citronella in a typical sheet is too small to meaningfully affect most bugs, and whatever impact it does have will fade fast.

 

He said a sheet stuffed into a crack where ants are entering a kitchen might scramble their scent trail temporarily, but the insects will eventually reroute or simply wait the smell out.

 

For anyone serious about keeping insects away, Runyon pointed to sturdier options.

 

Planting lavender and mint near doorways, window boxes, or garden sheds provides a repellent that doesn’t wash out after one wash cycle. Sprays containing DEET or picaridin work fast, while cedar and lavender oil sprays offer a gentler alternative, provided shoppers match the product to the specific pest they’re battling.

 

Traps, too, can help, so long as they’re designed for the right target, since ant traps, fly traps, and mosquito traps aren’t interchangeable.

 

As for the mailbox itself, Runyon’s advice is simple. Close the lid. No opening means no wasp can slip inside, and no unlucky letter carrier gets stung reaching in to drop off the mail.

TORBIC IS BACK FOR THE OPEN MIC AT GOLD RUSH BREWERY SATURDAY JULY 25 6:00-9:00 IN MADOC

Dear Friends:

BIG night at the Gold Rush Brewery this Saturday July 25 !! 

Torbic Kagmire is back from his Eastward Travels and we are VERY pleased to have him back hosting every Saturday Night 6:00-9:00 pm. at Gold Rush Brewing 162 Russel St. in Madoc. 

Robert and I are still planning on being there regularly and ESPECIALLY THIS Saturday. We are celebrating Elly's Birthday - if you know who that is - Elly is the Garlic Farmer from Railway Creek Farm in Cooper - and a regular at the Open Mic. Everyone is still welcome, of course. There will just likely be some pretty good action in the musical turn out and cake for all. 

So Come On Out and Welcome Torbic back home. Maybe he'll play us some Eastern tunes!! :D

See everyone this Saturday!

Elizabeth 

DOCTORS DISMISSED HER ENDOMETRIOSIS FOR YEARS

New York Post

 

exclusive

 

Doctors dismissed my agonizing symptoms for years — my misunderstood condition affects 190M people

By Kristina Kasparian

Published March 31, 2026, 7:55 a.m. ET

 

Most people go through life dreading a serious diagnosis and surgery. I spent my formative years begging for both.

 

At 30, while my peers were advancing their careers and growing their families, I couldn’t shower without vomiting from the strain it put on my body.

 

I couldn’t pull up my underwear or tie my shoes without my husband’s help.

 

I couldn’t stop fidgeting from the nerves that fired down my left leg. I couldn’t tolerate a seatbelt across my liver, a full bladder or more than an hour in pants. I couldn’t project my voice, not from a lack of confidence but because of the stabs I’d feel in my collarbone with every breath or cough.

 

I’d spend at least ten days in bed a month, especially (but not only) around ovulation and my period. I had intestinal blockages that made me holler on the toilet, bloating that made people give up their subway seats, and vaginal burning that made me shove a pillow between my legs after sex.

 

Chronically anemic but unable to stomach any iron, I’d collapse on the couch no matter what was urgent and how much I cared.

 

It was nothing new. It had just become unbearable.

 

This unnamed madness that had inhabited me since childhood eventually grounded my travels, limited the job offers I could accept post-PhD, buried me in debt despite my many scholarships and wrapped my brain in a fog that everyone assumed was burnout after grad school.

 

I knew what it was, but I couldn’t get a single doctor to confirm it.

 

“Can we please check if it’s endometriosis?”

 

I lost count of how often I asked doctors this question and how many of them said I was too young to have it, that it was rare, that I just had a UTI or IBS or acid reflux, and was I seeing someone about my anxiety?

 

It’s easy to focus on anxiety when a patient is an overachiever from an immigrant home. It’s easy to zoom in on the ovaries of a married woman in her reproductive age, even if she tells you she’s not looking to have kids. It’s easier to count follicles during ultrasounds than to count days of missed school, missed work and missed fun.

 

Even when my earliest periods were light and tolerable, I struggled with sharp pinching near my bladder, a bowling-ball weight in my pelvis, a monthly migraine that nothing would appease and disabling digestive problems: constipation, diarrhea, nausea and food sensitivities that appeared out of the blue.

 

These red herrings shouldn’t have been red herrings if doctors had been trained to recognize the classic whole-body constellation of symptoms triggered by endo.

 

But no matter how matter-of-factly I communicated what I was experiencing, I left every appointment empty-handed and invalidated.

 

At 17, an ER doctor was convinced I was bleeding out from a miscarriage even if I insisted it was “just” my period, that I’d always pass clots the size of half my palm.

 

At 29, I lost feeling in my vagina from a doctor who overdosed me with a lidocaine shot and injured me with a speculum while rummaging for my cervix, which I found out two years later was pulled out of position from adhesions — inflammatory bands of fibrous scar tissue that distort anatomy and impede organ function.

 

At 32, I was dismissed from a pain clinic after waiting nearly a year to be admitted, because the doctor subscribed to the outdated belief that endo was a gynecological issue that didn’t cause chronic pain and didn’t warrant multidisciplinary intervention.

 

Each time, my despair was undeniable, but I was simply told to come back if it got worse or to hold out until pregnancy or menopause when hormones would resolve the pain (spoiler alert: they didn’t).

 

It was lazy and ignorant medicine.

 

Yet it was, supposedly, my fault. A fertility doctor told me endo is a “career woman’s disease,” the consequence of dilly-dallying with pregnancy. I was blamed for relying on the narcotics I was prescribed instead of trying yoga or better sex hygiene or motivating myself to get better. When I’d ask for my medical files, I’d find gems in there about how demanding and difficult I was.

 

I’d love to tell you the journey of an endo patient is now radically different than it was decades ago when I was a teen. Sadly, this is still the global norm.

 

Most people don’t hear the word endometriosis at a doctor’s office but through social media. They learn from their peers that endo is a condition where tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows where it shouldn’t. They learn, as I did, that it’s common for endo to grow outside the pelvis, on any organ, as well as the spaces, ligaments and nerves between them.

 

At 31, I paid out of pocket and traveled six hours for my first of five surgeries. I naively thought diagnosis would bring total relief. I expected my life and career to click back into gear, but surgery was far from an overnight fix.

 

Being denied care for so long creates a disability.

 

I often wonder who I’d have been if I’d heard the words “it could be endometriosis” in my teens.

 

It would’ve changed the way I breathe, the way I pee, the way I make plans and set goals, the way I fear exercise and food and movement, the way my posture can’t be uncurled, the way I bully myself when I’m unproductive or unable. I might’ve continued my career in science, had fewer miscarriages, not spent hundreds of thousands on egg donation and surrogacy.

 

Maybe I wouldn’t get so angry each time I’m asked to consent to something before being informed. I wouldn’t need someone with me when I meet a new doctor, wouldn’t sit in the waiting room clutching a list of questions with clammy hands.

 

Despite affecting about 190 million people, endometriosis remains trivialized, underfunded and poorly researched. The greatest challenge in endo care is that the condition continues to be misconstrued as nothing more than a painful period though it is a complex and whole-body inflammatory condition.

 

Dr. Andrea Vidali, the Founder and Medical Director of the Endometriosis Surgical Specialists International (ESSI) and a reproductive endocrinologist/immunologist in New York, performs 500 specialized surgeries for endometriosis a year. Most US doctors perform fewer than 20, according to Intuitive Surgical. Vidali is also the co-founder of Endometriosis Summit, the only multidisciplinary endometriosis conference that gathers physicians, patients and activists.

 

By the time patients come to Vidali, they have experienced a traumatic medical history.

 

“Many of the poor outcomes we see in endometriosis are not the disease’s fault — they are the result of delayed diagnosis and surgeries performed without the necessary expertise,” Vidali told The Post. “We’re now studying the neurological and immune mechanisms of the disease. That’s where the real breakthroughs will come.”

 

Heather Guidone, BCPA, Program Director at the Center for Endometriosis Care in Atlanta, says the future of endometriosis care depends on recognizing endo as a complex, whole-body disease that requires specialized and multidisciplinary expertise.

 

“We need greater physician education and a more accurate public understanding of the disease,” she said. “When we invest in research and start listening to patients sooner, we can dramatically shorten the diagnostic delay and improve outcomes for millions living with endometriosis.”

 

In the words of Dr. Mona Orady, a specialized endometriosis surgeon in California, “If you think you have endometriosis, you most probably do.”

 

It took me nearly three decades to unlearn the stigma of being a demanding patient, of taxing the system’s resources by pushing for a second, third, tenth opinion.

 

Please know this: You are the expert who inhabits your body. Trust yourself and fight for the quality of life you deserve.

 

Kristina Kasparian is a writer, health activist, and entrepreneur with a PhD in neurolinguistics. Connect with her on Instagram @alba.a.new.dawn and kristinakasparian.com.

 

AH: That's doctors for you. They think they know your body better than you do. I have a story about that I may tell sometime.