Tiger Uncle and Chindogu

Absurdity abounds in Japan. When a SKAR member was is Tokyo last year, he noticed a diminutive looking old Japanese man standing on the street corner by himself looking pensive. What a sweet old man thought SKAR member. And then all of a sudden sweet old Japanese man opens a plastic bag with practiced ease and... in a manner both routine and nonchalant, begins to don a hat. No ordinary hat my friends. It was a Tiger hat! The mind boggles:

Where did he get this hat from? Why is he wearing it? Is he making a fashion statement? Does he do it to ward off evil? Perhaps to intimidate? Maybe to pick up chicks?


No surprise that the Japanese are the same group of people that developed Chindogu:

Chindōgu is the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that, on the face of it, seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem. However, Chindōgu has a distinctive feature: anyone actually attempting to use one of these inventions would find that it causes so many new problems, or such significant social embarrassment that effectively it has no utility whatsoever.
Featured below is an example of Chindogu.


Tiger Uncle might get upset if we put him in this category because his hat probably does serve some subliminal purpose that is not apparent to unsuspecting SKAR members.