Chindogu: Weird and Useless Japanese Inventions

One of my favorite possessions is an 18th century Japanese Sahku Dokei from the Tokugawa shogunate. It's a clock that tells time using twelve temporal hours, six for day, six for night. All the hour markers are movable, so you can adjust them as the seasons change, that way your hours are always evenly dividing the day and night.

It pretty obviously wasn't intended to be designed in the Chindogu style, as that was the standard method of telling time in Japan before the modern time system was adopted, but it sure feels like it when looking at it now.

I worked at an e‑waste center in the early 2000s that eventually shut down, and as a result still have roughly 50 pounds of old pagers in various states of disrepair.

One of my personal chindogu ideas (someday) is to wire them all up so I can control them from a phone app, then strap them to different "meridian points" on a customer to deliver an authentic beeper massage experience.

IIRC, these were all in one book that I read as a kid. I wish they had credited it so I could find a copy to give as a gift.

I've seen everyone of these before. A couple of them are strangely practical such as the eyedropper glasses and the finger toothbrush (ideal for travelling).

Butter stick would actually be great