Personal electric fans are an imperfect solution to packed-train heat.

It’s a hot, sticky summer in Japan this year, and that’s actually a fitting description of pretty much every summer in Japan for the past few generations. But while high temperatures and high humidity have long been unavoidable during the summer months, there’s a modern way to cope with them that’s been booming in popularity as handheld electric fan sales rapidly rise.

While not a completely new arrival to the Japanese market, personal handy fans have become much more common recently, especially among women. Improving battery technology has made the devices lighter, smaller, and more affordable, and with more and more people now used to giving their phone a midday charge while at the office or cafe, it’s pretty easy to remember to plug in your fan too and top it off.

▼ A display of handy fans at major electronics retailer Yodobashi Camera, with models priced at 1,930 yen (US$13.30).

However, even as handy fans are gaining traction as a way to deal with Japan’s summer heat, they’re proving to be a less congruent match for another often unpleasant aspect of life in Japan: crowded trains.

Barring especially old or historically preserved carriages, Japanese trains are air-conditioned. However, hop on one at rush hour in midsummer, and you’ll quickly notice that that combined body heat of shoulder-to-shoulder commuters is beyond the capacity of the cooling system. So that means it’s time for handy fans to come to the rescue, right? Well, yes and no.

Sure, the fan will help cool off the person using it, but being in close proximity to others can cause problems. Some train passengers have reported incidents of passengers’ hair getting caught in the blades of the handy fan of someone standing next to or behind them, with very painful results. Then there’s the matter that while you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who says that Japan’s rush hour trains are chilly in summertime, not everyone thinks it’s any more pleasant to get blasted by someone else’s fan, especially when they’ve got no say over the fan speed and what part of their body it’s hitting.

▼ Handy fans can be surprisingly powerful for their size.

Both Japan’s National Consumer Affairs Center and Consumer Affairs Agency have previously issued statements cautioning handy fan users to be aware of the possible danger and discomfort they could be causing for those around them and to exercise appropriate caution. As of this moment, no major rail operators have banned the use of handy fans on their carriages, but as is often the case in shared spaces in Japan, even without explicit rules the Japanese societal expectation is that one should use common sense and err on the side of caution when doing things that might make others uncomfortable, so once the train or subway starts getting crowded, the best course of action might be to put the fan away, even if that means you arrive at your destination station a little sweatier for it.

Source: Bengoshi.com via Livedoor News via Jin
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