Worried About Your Date’s Soberness? Not Anymore!
If you think alcohol drinking is rampant in your part of the globe, wait ’til you get to Japan. The home country of Godzilla sees alcohol as part of the norm. Salarymen, known to the rest of the globe as office workers, often go straight to drinking right after work. In fact, alcohol is so common and big in Japan that parents often allow their underage children to drink. The Japanese also take every opportunity available to celebrate and have a nice drinking party. Whilst in other parts of the globe drinking might cause juvenile delinquency, it seems to have the opposite effect on Japan.
To make sure you don’t hang out with a drunk, however, an ingenious invention has entered the market. Topland’s Etiquette Checker checks the soberness of your company by testing their breath. Marketed with the tag line “Let’s become a sociable person” which is worthy of Engrish.com, one’s alcohol level is predicted within 13 seconds of checking. The product then puts the person on a six-tier scale as you can see on the LCD screen. Due to Japan’s predilection for alcohol, however, one is not determined as too drunk to be enjoyable company until the test pronounces him off the scale.
The aim of the manufacturers is to make “responsible drinkers” out of the Japanese and to have everyone only drink within the scale to avoid and curtail hang-overs. How noble. I believe the best thing about this gadget, however, is that it tries to keep people within the limits of having stinky alcohol breath. It’s a turn-off and major source of embarrassment, believe me, unless you’re infamous for worming your way out of embarrassing situations by claiming you’ve just had garlic and onion pizza. To see the Etiquette Checker in action, watch this video.
Source: Topland via Kilian Nakamura
