From our other sites
The story
A celebrity’s social media post sparked debate over using handheld fans on trains, with complaints like “I’m getting blasted with air that evaporated your sweat” and reports of hair getting sucked into the blades.
On 5ch, opinions split between those defending the fans as necessary heatstroke prevention and those calling them a manners violation on packed trains, with the discussion eventually spreading to alternative cooling gear like air-conditioned jackets and water-cooling devices.
[Debate] Handheld Fans on Trains — OK or Not OK? “That Wind Carries Your Evaporated Sweat…” Celebrity’s Social Media Post Sparks Controversy, With Reports of Hair Getting Sucked In Too
8/25 (Tue) 8:00 AM
Yomiuri TV
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Well, skip it and you might get heatstroke.
So really it comes down to: your self-satisfaction, or some old man's life — which matters more?
What kind of situation has you catching heatstroke on a train with the AC running, unless you whip out a fan?
That's a sad thing to say 😢
Do bald guys even wear swim caps at the pool?
That's not something for cramped spaces either.
Can't use it on a packed train.
And on top of that, some guys snap it open and shut loud enough to be annoying.
That's basically every old man with a folding fan.
Going "aahh, so hot" out loud over and over, so irritating.
Manufacturers, put quiet fans in these things.
Buyers, test them before you buy.
A loud fan usually means a cheap Chinese battery inside.
Once that battery catches fire
and you become a victim of "flaming clothes," it's too late.
Can't touch, can't look, can't smell — so what am I supposed to do?!
On a train with the AC on, I sort of get it, but using one outside in the daytime is just dumb.
Do they actually feel cool getting blasted with hot air?
It makes sweat evaporate faster, for the cooling effect.
Because the guy who sprinted to catch the train and is drenched in sweat is hot.
It's because you're packed so close to strangers.
Makes you extra self-conscious about it.
Right, if it's that brutally hot outside, just get moving instead of using that thing — that's all I can think. Everyone who uses one outdoors is an idiot, no exceptions.
If it's an actual cooler fan and not just a plain fan, it's incredibly cooling.
Train was packed but there was a clear gap by the window nobody would approach — thought it was strange, then I saw someone had thrown up ("gero") right there by the window. Made sense after that.
Yeah, that stuff reeks.
Air-conditioned jackets are walking pollution. They should ban wearing them anywhere there's a crowd.
If someone's wearing an air-conditioned jacket outside of work, it's best to keep your distance from them, in more ways than one.
If you rig a radiator into your business bag, that'd probably keep you cool.
Water-cooling has a noisy pump too, though.
Background and Key Points
Japan’s summers have become brutal enough that the government now issues daily “necchusho keikaihou” (heatstroke alert) warnings, and handheld fans — battery-powered, pocket-sized “handy fans” — have become near-universal street and commute gear over the past several years, alongside fan-equipped work jackets (“kuchofuku”) originally designed for outdoor laborers. The backdrop that matters here is the Japanese commuter train itself: unlike many countries, these cars pack riders shoulder-to-shoulder in near silence, with unwritten but strictly enforced norms against loud phone calls, eating, and generally imposing on the personal space of strangers. That’s the context that turns something as trivial as a desk fan into a genre of debate.
Notably, the thread didn’t split cleanly into pro-fan versus anti-fan camps. Almost nobody defended blasting a fan in a jammed train car — even fan users conceded that’s different from using one outdoors or in open space. The real fault line was over degree and etiquette: fan noise (the snap of a folding fan, a buzzing motor) versus the airflow itself, and whether alternatives like air-conditioned jackets or water-cooling rigs are actually worse offenders due to smell and mechanical noise. In that sense the thread escalated into a hierarchy of commuting annoyances rather than a fan-specific verdict.
One thing worth noting that no poster raised: heatstroke deaths in Japan are overwhelmingly concentrated among the elderly, which is likely why “an old man’s life” became the rhetorical shorthand for the pro-fan side — it echoes real public health data on who actually dies from heat, even though nobody in the thread cited it.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread “[Debate] Handheld Fans on Trains — OK or Not OK? ‘That Wind Carries Your Evaporated Sweat…’ With Reports of Hair Getting Sucked In Too”.
Leave a Reply