The glue I actually discovered by accident, but for the yolk thing there, never knew about the salt...great life hacking tips.

TheManator

The range of frequencies that humans can hear is between 30 Hz to 20 kHz. The article says 6000 to 8000 mHz which is not correct even if you ignore that a lower case m means milli, meaning one thousandth, which doesn't make much sense when talking about sound waves. An upper case M would mean Mega Hertz which is way outside of the range of human hearing. It should probably say 6kHz or 6000 Hz.

Kilter

Actually gook IS a synonym for goop.

LI_Mom

Yeah, I noticed that too Awesome.

I'm sure it was no harm-no foul.

Nice article, but seems like it almost belongs on late night public broadcasting infomercials. I would really like to see these in action.

--optimistic skeptic

malnourish

@AwesomeCheeseburger: Oh boy. It's a good thing this isn't an article about Korean tricks otherwise that could ALMOST seem to be some subliminal hate.

I'm about 100% sure Lisa meant to type goop :)

amodlin

And it probably would have flown by 99.9% of the world's radar if you hadn't pointed it out :)

I really doubt the writer meant anything by it...

GA TechWriter

"Dilemma: The egg was supposed to crack in the pan-not on the floor. Now there's gook all over the linoleum."

Now there's "gook" all over the floor... nice choice of words for an article on secret Japanese tricks and specifically cleaning up the yellow yolk of an egg.

AwesomeCheeseburger

Is there a tip for retrofitting a dresser into a 4-story bunkbed?

Darascon

Citing the American Heritage Dictionary:

"gook: a thin messy substance, such as sludge"

Seems like an appropriate use of the word to me.

Dville-Julie

@VakeroRokero: Go to Japan?

silencedotcom

@LI_Mom: As long as you pronounce it "gək" and not "gük". The latter is the offencive term. The non-offencive term, "gək", may also be spelt "guck" rather than "gook".

kc2idf

That looks great, i am definitely considering buying that!

sorry, but am i the only one who doesn't know what the offensive meaning of gook is??

bagano

Any tricks to get laid pronto?

VakeroRokero

Number 1 should be 'date a Japanese girl.'

OX4

Tip #4 is an incredible example of alcohol abuse! Beer is meant to be consumed, not spilled upon the barren earth. For God's sake, just get a can of green spray paint. It will last longer and then you can still drink the beer.

seismic007

@bagano: Perhaps not. As I understand it, it originated during the Viet Nam "police action", in which the Vietnamese, trying to address the visitors, were using a phrase, which, I am told, means "visitor" or "American" or something to that effect. It sounds like "Me gook". As a consequence, some soldiers took it upon themselves to say, "okay, fine. You gook," and the name stuck and became a pejorative for any race of east asian, hence I think you can see why some folks view this choice of word with some irony.

Other sources say that the term originated in the Philippines, towards the end of the 19th century. You can look it up in Wikipedia, if you are really interested.

kc2idf

Sweet :)

Mustn't forget the Japanese shirt-folding trick:

[video.google.com]

trumpetfalcon

Sorry, just for a moment there I'm thought you told me to pour perfectly good beer on my lawn...

reclusivemonkey

I've been meaning to buy this book for a while, ever since I saw it posted on boingboing

zikman

Is there video of #5 somewhere? I can't picture how it would work.

MercuryPDX

@Troy F.: Salt is about 50 cents for a big huge drum. Commercial cleaners cost a ton, and are terrible at getting egg off a floor. That one, at least, is perfectly economically feasible.

Bread isn't quite as cheap, but it's a fairly low-price item as well. And I know beer (at least the kind of beer I like) is far from cheap, but it's a hell of a lot more convenient than running down to the hardware store and buying fertilizer... plus it's the perfect excuse to pop open a cold one. A little for the lawn, and the rest for me, if you catch my drift.

HeartBurnKid

@seismic007: So, in other words, "slap a band-aid on it and get drunk"? :)

HeartBurnKid

These are interesting, but I'm a little doubtful of the economics of using bread to clean up broken glass, beer to fertilize the lawn, salt to clean up egg, etc.

Cool tricks though, I gotta admit.

Troy F.

@seismic007: You have fun worshipping your spoiled grain.

ankeet

@DWes: While the frequencies are wrong, the general principle is not BS, though I learned it with white noise, not the swooshing sound.

Seriously, though. White noise (or a vacuum or static on the radio) can really calm a crying baby, but usually only for the first 3 months or so of its newborn life. That and swaddling are life-savers.

conigs

If #4 works, it's not for the reason cited. Dog pee kills grass by overfertilizing -- the nitrogen salt concentration gets too high and burns the roots. Grass can't eat fermented sugars -- any sugars and starches will be consumed by fungi in the soil. Grass gets all its raw energy from sunlight, and only takes certain minerals from the soil -- mostly nitrogen.

If it works, it's probably by buffering the acidic nitrogen salts. Beer has a lot of potassium... that might do it. It's still probably more effective to throw a little quicklime over the dead patch of grass and then cover it with a thin layer of mixed topsoil and new grass seed, and water often for a couple weeks.

julesa

@Kilter:
@DWes:

Did you not read the entire post? Babies..in the womb.

pezdaddy

I know #1 is BS, unless they meant 600-800Hz. 7000Hz is 2.5 octaves above the highest a human voice or any non-electronic instrument can reproduce, and if you've ever heard it isolated, it's a really annoying shriek. It wouldn't calm anybody down. And as has already been pointed out, mHz or MHz is just ridiculous.

I'll bet the rest are BS, also.

DWes

@theyrealltaken: You beat me to it.

eternaluxe

For the homies.

theyrealltaken

Like several others have mentioned, the 6000-8000 MHz (or mHz) may not be correct. Here's a paper studying the "Development of Fetal Hearing". It claims to have tested on 100Hz to 3000Hz. That's just working off the abstract, though, I didn't read through the paper :)

Regardless, being a tech-minded geek, the first thing that popped into my head when I read that part was "What happens to them when we get 6-8 GHz processors?" :)

eternicode

I tried the tip about stuffing my socks with marbles, but all I got was sore feet and an impossible time putting my shoes on. Plus, they were still muddy a week later. Is there a video about how this works?

Lazarus

Excellent!! Can't wait to get home and spill some beer on my yard.

Art Gonzalez
Check my Squidoo Lens at: Quantum Knights

quantumknight

@DWes: To explain something people can't just make up pseudo-scientific arguments that don't have any experimental evidence but sound like they could work? And if they have doubts about actual science, even if there is experimental evidence, theoretic backing, and predictive power, they just can't disregard it just because they have grown up with a prejudiced view of the world? Wow!

I totally believe in the flying spaghetti monster. I grew up sticking spaghetti up my nose therefore whoever designed me can't be very intelligent.

Kent84

Lucky timing, I just wound up with a bunch of fiberglass splinters in my hand from re-shingling my roof. The rest of these are not all that useful though.

Dom

The baby one never worked on my son. He's almost a year old now, and it hasn't worked once. (tried many times over the past year)

Tony Bullard

Nice!
I also found a Wired article that Lisa did HERE.
Check the thumbnail links on the left for more tips.

da5id_nz

Is there a tip how to fix a washing machine for cheap after ruining it by washing loads of paper in it? What if 1 slice of bread doesn't clean up all the glass, should I use the whole bag? Never had a problem cleaning up a dropped egg using a towel.

I'm going to claim to be Italian and publish my book of tips, Clean up a egg spill with warm pasta (Instant carbonara!) I'll call it "Dammi il Tuo Denaro, e più Suggerimenti per Idioti".

spanktastic

Pardon my sheer ignorance but roughly what percentage of Japanese households regularly feature bread as a food choice?
I know it's not all bean curd, rice and whale testicles but bread?

bsts

I'm amazed at the number of people who are hating on this article. What have I missed in this excerpt of Lisa's that is so terrible? I really think the information presented is clever and potentially helpful. Or do people just not like Lisa? :\

voyage2k

@julesa: Well, there are a few people pointing out factual errors, but there's a whole lot more just plain griping and self-ass-making going on.

Yeah, some of this stuff is suspect and/or flat out bull, but you're going to get that in any collection of folk remedies, Japanese or no. Sometimes, old wives are really smart, but sometimes, they're really, really stupid. That doesn't invalidate that a lot of this stuff really is useful. I never would have thought of the glue thing, or the salt thing, myself.

HeartBurnKid

@Kent84: Could you try that again when you're sober? I have no idea what you're saying.

rscotta

@voyage2k: I don't know enough about Lisa to like her or dislike her. But I do think people writing a book or even an article advising people to do things, like wrapping rubber bands around their kids' extremities -- see the Wired article da5id_nz linked, should check their facts more thoroughly than Lisa appears to have done. It's not "hating on the article" to point out factual errors.

julesa

@julesa: Maybe I should clarify. These are tricks that some people have tried before; it worked for them, so they spread the word, and it somehow got to me and I put it in the book. I'm not saying everything works all the time. The facts were checked with experts, but a lot of it's theory-i.e. nobody ever really did a scientific study on why beer would make grass green again. Most importantly, it's supposed to be a fun coffee table book about a cultural phenomenon, not a science manual. But thanks for taking the time to offer your critique!

LISA KATAYAMA

@bsts Bread is a staple in modern Japan. Most of the Japanese people I know have toast and coffee, not rice and tea, for breakfast (for better or worse).

wintersweet

yeah i also like the with the vacuum ;) i need to tell it to my sister !

ChambrasWeed

@chaschas: Even easier (and more energy efficient) - our sanity was saved when we used a suggestion to use the radio on static to get our baby to sleep. We've used it ever since. All I did was disconnect the antenna from the stereo in her room and voila! Peace at last.

quagmire0

Baby crying: switch on the vacuum cleaner. That sounds like the womb to the baby, believe it or not, and really works. I actually made a cd of the hoover sound when we had our baby and played it when things got hairy. Not as effective as the real vacuum cleaner but pretty good.

chaschas

@bsts: Yes, bread is a staple of Japanese breakfast. Cereal is pretty rare, but toast and coffee is standard. Japanese bread is thick, moist, dense... if you have a Japanese bakery nearby, give it a visit. Humiliates even the boutique sandwich bread from America.

Great. Now I've made myself hungry.

Zadaz

@LI_Mom: Agreed but it rhymes with "book." The other pronunciation - that rhymes with toque (that lovely and fashionable Canadian winter head warmer) - is indeed offensive but I don't think the writer meant it.

I feel sure the "goop" sense was meant.

Jim (The Canuck One)

@Tony Bullard: I suspect that the baby cry-stop thing only works in certain circumstances; ie, I don't think it would work if the baby was crying because it was uncomfortable because of wind and needed burping.

Not having one of my own though, I can't really say :)

da5id_nz

@bagano:

If you don't understand why "gook" would be offensive, then you ought to watch Full Metal Jacket with your full attention. Maybe write John McCain a question about it?

Or try googling it.

AwesomeCheeseburger

@amodlin:

Haha. I suspect it's not intentional, but that's what makes it innocently a humorous poor choice in words.

Though I feel obligated to point out that while "gook" might be more malicious if directed at Koreans or South Pacific Islanders, part of racism towards Asians is the "they're all the same" attitude I.E. all the slurs apply to all the various ethnic groups.

Still can't beat saying there's gook all over the floor in reference to a nice yellow broken yolk... that's just too much.

AwesomeCheeseburger

VakeroRokero - hit the Powerball lottery. Nothing screams "do me" like $200 million in the bank.

BlackFlag55

Why are these... Japanese tricks?

Dooga

I think this book might be sort of a joke. I'm not sure whether it's meant to be one, but I find it pretty funny. Maybe people are taking it too seriously?

alexkapone

I agree with running the vacuum cleaner to calm a crying baby. It certainly worked with my two. Of course, just try getting one of 'em to run a vacuum cleaner these days.

infmom

A better way to deal with the grass issue - put tomato juice into your dogs water - takes them about a week to get used to the taste.
The acidic juice metabolizes differently and basically nutralizes the burning nitrogen content in the dog pee and it is then more of a fertilizer. you'll have little-super-green-fast-growing patches instead of dead-brown patches.

Believe me when i say it works, because my dog is 120 lbs and drinks a lot, so he produces a LOT of pee.

also, then you can save your beer for yourself (i'm also Canadian, so this is important!!! lol).

@conigs: swaddling is only a life saver if your baby is under 10 lbs. apparently once they hit this magic weight, they generate more heat, and contricting them by swaddling too tightly can lead to SIDS. My wife just gave birth to twin girls back in February, and they're hitting ten lbs now, and they are little furnaces - we drape them with cotton blankets now. They scream if they get too warm.

gover57

@HeartBurnKid: Salt may be more economical that commercial cleaners, but it's certainly not more economical than a rag or a sponge that can be reused. Same thing with bread (which is getting more expensive by the day, I might add) when you can use a brush and dustpan or, if you have one, a vacuum cleaner. Beer isn't a staple so I don't find it quite as absurd, but then I buy good beer...no way I'm dumping it on my lawn...at least not intentionally.

I just think using food products for non-food uses when better, cheaper, reusable alternatives exist is really, really stupid.

Troy F.

@gover57: Agreed!!! I can't stand it when I see people wrapping up their children with layers of clothes. Don't forget, humans especially Caucasians are highly adapted to cold weather. I still remember episodes of my parents putting too much clothes on me, but I had not gained the dexterity to unbutton the clothing or be able to say the word "hot" yet.

ICEBreaker

Now I know why I LOVE hearing the vacuum in the morning when I wake up in my bed. I also need to hear the whirring sound of the computer to fall asleep.

ICEBreaker

@VakeroRokero:
There are like numerous escorts in your area who can help you. Loook in your local YellowPages.
Also various bathrooms, parks and bars, if your not picky. And since your in a hurry, then it seems like who is the least of your concerns.

KenGirard

@Troy F.: Personally, every time I've tried to get up egg with just a rag or a sponge, it's a lot of elbow grease, and I inevitably miss a few spots which harden and become near-impossible to remove. Same with glass -- brooms and dustpans are good and all, but they'll inevitably miss the tiny shards, which end up embedded in your foot a week later. I don't know if the salt and bread tricks will work any better, but they can't work much worse.

HeartBurnKid

@ VakeroRokero: It's fifty buck no matter where you go (unless you're a politician, then it's the same as the amount of tax - as much as you can suck out of the victim's wallet).

What does it mean to "flex" your feet?

As for picking up glass with bread, I have the same problem that I have with a broom, a paper towel, or the vacuum - where *are* the shards of glass? Apparently, only my feet are sensitive enough to find them.

Deadhacker

Paper shredders seem less expensive that repairing my washing machine -- nothing against Lisa here, but I wouldn't recommend anything that could clog the plumbing!

Why not try the time-honored, "My dog ate my homework" approach instead? :-)

pittore_marco

Why isn't "have sex with a Japanese girl" on this list?

sgodun

I'd like to meet the baby who can hear sounds at frequencies 6 to 8 Hz. (i.e. 6000 to 8000 mHz). I don't care if the baby's in the womb or not.

Oh, that was a typographical error?

Then show me the baby who can hear sounds at frequencies 6 to 8 GHz (i.e. 6000 to 8000 MHz) Man, at that rate, the little clock in my 2 GHz CPU must drive my baby UP THE WALL!

LOL. I don't think I will be reading this book.

Posco Grubb

@chaschas: No wonder I fall asleep whenever I hear a vacuum.

The glue/splinter tip is a good one, I'll have to give it a try.

Instead of bread (wtf?) for broken glass I'll wrap some packing tape around my hand, sticky side out, and gently pat the glass up after quickly sweeping up all the large pieces.

Gann

@ICEBreaker: You might like the sound of a vacuum in the morning knowing that it's being done and you don't have to do it :)

da5id_nz

More tips and hints? Always welcome stuff! Congrats to Ms Katayama on the book; may it instruct many!

Not wanting to throw cold water on a friendly discussion, but I know of the author from WIRED articles that hit a minor pet peeve of mine: exaggeration of "cultural differences" in the name of a good story. (Post on that topic and the WIRED articles: [www.homejapan.com] )

In this case, I have to question the phrase "...phenomenon called urawaza"; the latter word simply means "trick" or "tip" or "shortcut" (which is even pointed out in this page), and is used generically in many a mundane circumstance. Is that any more a "phenomenon" than any people applying their noggins to household tasks all through history? I'll happily wager, too, that many of the listed tips can be found around the world, even if introduced here with "...we like to do things a little differently in Japan". (I'm not sure why nationality is even relevant to, say, cleaning up an egg yolk.)

Okay, so I'm coming across as a grump. I'll lay off here. I'll just pass along advice to always take "culturally different ways of doing things" claims with a bunch of salt. (Hmm, salt. I'll bet that's good for lots of stuff around the house. : )

Homejapan

does that tip work with cleaning up that gook (errr goop) on the linoleum after a hari-kari (errr seppuku)

jplemley

Mi Kuk, which is pronounced "me gook" is the Korean word for America and means beautiful country. The author meant no harm in using the word. It's not the word that's bad, in fact there is no such thing as a bad word.
I've always heard it with a reference to Vietnamese as well, though I'm not sure why since the origin would seem to be Korean. Either way, it has nothing to do with the Japanese or this article.

xanth592

I saw your video with the baby. Awesome! My faves in the book are picking up broken glass with a slice of bread and peeling a hard boiled egg. Super-cool & super-easy!

ScootMagApril

I sincerely hope you actually meant milliHertz. Even if you did, why not just write 6-8Hz? Or are you genuinely confident enough that you determined the baby's hearing ability up to the mHz :)

Starlyght

Unless they are trying to ccok the baby with microwaves, I think they mean 6000-8000 hz, rather than mhz.

SurupaGabynoodle

@bsts: @bsts: sliced bread is fairly common in alot of households in Japan. It's sliced really thick though, like Texas toast.

adam51172

Hehe, for Spilled egg yolk - I just whistle loudly, tap my feet, and I have a 75 pound furball slurping up the egg (and shell sometimes). Makes it easier, and I don't waste salt.

TheTrainedMonkey

where's the tip for making more money by not working at all ?

headsmacker

What! Wasting beer to make grass greener? Despicable! The egg trick is pretty cool though :)

lestat730