Category: Blog

Japanese apartment listings say 1K, 1LDK, or 2LDK, but never what fridge size actually fits. A room-by-room liter breakdown, with real models and prices.

Choose a washing machine in Japan by capacity, installation space, drying method, and disposal cost, with practical checks for small Japanese apartments.

Every air conditioner in Japan is a wall-mounted mini-split, and there’s a real engineering reason why. Here’s the postwar history, and what to actually buy.

There’s a nut on the Shinkansen that hasn’t come loose in 40 years of 250 km/h operation. It’s called the Hardlock nut. Wakabayashi Katsuhiko invented it, and his company, Hardlock Industry Co., Ltd., is based in Higashi-Osaka. The building probably looks like every other factory building on its street. The nut works on a wedge…

When I was writing the air purifier article a few weeks ago, I tried to find out who actually manufactures the filter media inside the Daikin MC556A-W I recommended. Daikin doesn’t say on the box. The manual doesn’t say. The filter itself has a batch code printed along one edge, nothing else. It took longer…

A mechanical engineer living in Japan breaks down which air purifier to buy — real 2026 prices from Kakaku.com, honest takes on Plasmacluster vs Nanoe vs Streamer, and clear picks for every budget.

Update: 2024.Mar.24 By: Andrew Photo by Max Vakhtbovych, Pexels The winter is especially cold this year, so the thought of getting an air-conditioner pops up for that living room. I thought it would not be too difficult to decide on which one to get in an electrical outlet store like BIC Camera, or Yodobashi camera.…