Great, another job taken over by machines.

Ear maintenance is often a tricky game. Those sound holes often get filled with gunk, but disposal isn’t always as easy as it seems. Countless sticks and swabs are available on the Japanese market, but at the same time health professionals insist that we shouldn’t be inserting anything in there for fear of damaging our hearing.

It’s a problem that has plagued our writer Mr. Sato, who once struggled with hearing loss due to excess wax build-up as a result of negligent cleaning. Afterward, he became a diligent cotton swabber but ended up pushing too much wax deeper into his ear, once again causing hearing issues.

After screaming, “There has got to be a better way!” Mr. Sato turned to the Internet for guidance and found an alternative in the form of an electric ear cleaner. He was understandably nervous about letting a machine have its way with his delicate canals, but what other choice did he have at this point?

He went to Tokyu Hands department store which had a surprisingly diverse range of ear-cleaning products, but only one electric device: the Mimi Sukkiri Cleaner by Smile Kids. Since Mr. Sato was just a big ol’ 45-year-old kid himself, and it was only about 1,000 yen (US$9), he decided to give it a go.

The package explained that this was a suction-type cleaner, meaning it had a tiny fan inside that would suck out all the nastiness inside Mr. Sato’s ears with the aid of two AA batteries.

It kind of looked like a power drill, which wasn’t too reassuring, but it had a pink or blue silicon tip that he could choose depending on mood.

Popping off the cap, Mr. Sato could see the tiny fan inside, and rather than a drill it looked identical to one of those little lint vacuums that pull the balls of fabric off your socks.

In the case of ears, however, it seemed like it would have to walk that thin line between being too weak to pull out any wax and too strong to keep any brain cells inside.

But the time for inspection was over; the moment of truth had arrived. Mr. Sato prepared to jam this gadget into his ear in the hopes of cleaning all the crap out of them once and for all. I really think the developers of Instagram had this very video in mind when they created the platform.

Although it sounds rather quiet in the video, when inside one’s ear, that fan is actually quite noisy. However, the suction and feeling of the nozzle wasn’t bad by any means. In fact, Mr. Sato was wondering if this thing was really picking anything up at all.

But when he finished and pulled off the cap…

▼ Translation: “※We applied a mosaic as a self-regulatory measure.”

There were some substantial nuggets! That being said, he didn’t feel quite as clean as he might after a session with an ear picker. In addition, while Mr. Sato thought this was rather effective at removing his dry earwax, he wondered if it would work as well with those who have an oilier buildup.

Since a lot of doctors recommend not putting anything in your ear, we’ll stop short of recommending this device, but it does do what it says. So, if you’re going to go ahead and shove something in there anyway, the Mimi Sukkiri Cleaner might be an option to consider.

Source: Tokyu Hands Mimi Sukkiri Cleaner
Images: SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]