Explaining Japan's fan-cooled work jacketsfrom @fineasjackson

Transcript

This Japanese construction worker is wearing a jacket in 95 degree heat and it looks like someone inflated it with a bicycle pump. But somehow, this is one of the best ways to survive summer in Japan. This is Chasing Best episode 49. To understand why this thing exists, you need to understand Japanese summers. Tokyo in August isn't just hot, it's wet hot. Temperature is regularly pushed past 95 degrees with humidity above 70% And, millions of people work outside in it. Construction crews, traffic controllers, delivery worse. These aren't people who can step into an air conditioned office when it gets bad. For decades, the only solution was wet towels, shade breaks, and just hoping you didn't collapse. Heat stroke hospitalizations in Japan climb into the tens of thousands every summer. In the late nineteen eighties, a Sony engineer named Hiroshi Ichigaya took an early retirement and traveled through Southeast Asia. He saw cities developing at incredible speed. Skyscrapers going up everywhere with air conditioners being bolted onto every floor of the building. And he had a thought that would define the rest of his career. If every developing nation cools its buildings the way Japan does, the energy consumption alone will accelerate the very warming that we're trying to escape. He thought, if the problem was a hot body, why are we cooling the entire room? Why not just cool the body? Your body already carries its own coolant. It's called sweat. Sweat works by evaporating off your skin and that phase change going from liquid to vapor, pulls heat away from your body. The problem in humid still air is that sweat can't evaporate fast enough. It just sits there doing nothing. So Ichigaya's idea was this. What if you built a jacket with small fans that force air across the skin, giving sweat the airflow it needs to actually do its job? The first commercial version launched in 2004. Two small battery powered fans sit in holes at the lower back of the jacket. They pull outside air in. Now, the cuffs, the collar, and the hem are partially sealed. So instead of passing right through, the air is forced to travel across the back, around the torso, up the chest, along the arms, and out at the neck and wrists. Because airflow is restricted, the jacket inflates, puffing outward like a vest. And it worse. So well that they now sell millions of units a year, and it has become a summer staple. For around $35 Japan basically turned a construction jacket into wearable architecture. Which makes me wonder, why the heck doesn't the rest of the world use this?