Since I got hay fever a few years ago february and march have been pretty miserable months. In case you didn’t know, in Japan hay fever is a national disease. Half the population is allergic to some kind of pollen. While not as bad this year compared to last year, I’ve been waking up to itchy eyes and constant sneezing. The other day when the sun was shining through the window I could see just how dirty the air in my house was. All kinds of crud dancing around in the air and falling on my PS3. There’s nothing worse than dust on shiny black plastic. So I decided that I would finally go out and get an air purifier. Maybe two.
After my usual rigorous Internet research, I decided to get the Daikin Flash Streamer Hikari Kurieru. The long meaningless name tries to make up for the fact that it’s big and ugly compared to all the “ergonomic-looking” ones. But Daikin is a specialist in this area and has a good reputation. And they have a cool character, Pichon-kun, who lives inside the air-purifier and fights the pollen and fleas and mold germs. So I went to BicCamera after work and saw the price of the one I wanted was ¥39,000. That’s pretty darn expensive for a plastic box with a fan and some filters. And I saw it online for only ¥24,900. Even minus the 10% bic points it would still be way more expensive then buying online. I told the guy about the cheaper place and he went to check it out on kakaku.com. Most retail shops will give you a discount if you can prove that it’s cheaper somewhere else. He came back and said that that online shop (It’s Akibaoo, also a brick & mortar store in Akiba) is a wholesale shop and not a retail store like BicCamera so they were not considered competition and therefore could not give me a discount. Well, ¥15,000 is too big of a difference and it made me begin to question the merit of buying any kind of electronics at a big store like Bic if you could just buy it online at wholesale. So I left and when I got home I ordered 2 of them, one for upstairs and another for downstairs. I’m still skeptical about whether these things actually make a difference. Can someone who’s used one tell me if I’ve wasted my money or not? Anyway, we’ll see.
Completely unrelated. On the way home I stopped by Shimokitazawa and was walking around with no particular objective. I ended up at the antique toy shop 2Chome3Banchi located at the end of the shopping street. The owner asked me what I collected and I answered nothing in particular. He said “check out these erasers” and handed me a little bag with Q-Taro and Dorompa. Incredible!! I was amazed that of all the toys in the shop he would hand me these ones. How did he know I collected Q-Taros? They were only ¥500 so I bought them. Not because I wanted them but because of the significance of what this coincidence represented in the universe. I believe there are no coincidences.
I was enjoying that moment of cosmic connectedness until he started lecturing me on how he thought buying stuff on the Internet was stupid and that anyone who doesn’t enjoy discussing toys with the seller in person was not worth selling a toy to etc etc. Yeah, whatever..
More completely unrelated. If you have a GR Digital I suggest you do the firmware update that came out at the end of last year. Version 2.21. I skipped the previous one because I heard some bad things, but this latest firmware update fixed the macro focusing problem when you try to focus on something white, like the Q-Taro eraser above, and also included the ability to take photos at 3:2 ratio which is good cause you can fit more photos onto your SD Card.
I’d also like to know if anyone has used a really effective air purifier. If they don’t actually reduce the layer of dust on my furniture, then I’m uncertain they’re actually working.
You may recall that my husband’s hay fever vanished when I started dusting and vacuuming once a week like clock-work. These days, because of students, I vacuum twice a week. It really does seem to help.
On a sunny day it’s clear that there’s lots of airborne dust. So getting rid of that should effectively reduce the amount that accumulates on furniture and stuff. I’m also interested to see how effective they are for removing bad moldy smells.
Dust is a really annoying thing. So that’s why I don’t like carpets, soft furniture, etc. There is some interesting futuristic-lookin’ devices in our stores. They looks like a neat little vacoom-cleaner made of transparent plastic. Don’t know how to call ‘em in english but it’s something like “water steam air ionizer”. These devises based on a sort of piezo-vaporizer technology so the water steam is not a steam actually, it is more like a ionized fog 0_0 So all that you have to do is set the device somewhere in your room, plug to the wall outlet, pour some water in and turn it on. Then it gently starts to produce ionized water fog that should moisten and clean air in your room. I saw that device in action when i visited a friend of mine and it looked like air were realy fresh and clean just like after the rain. Ne Roy, i wonder is there something similar in a Tokyo stores?
I think what you are referring to is a humidifier. We have tons of those here too. They do clean the air although I’m not sure how effectively.
To Shari - I think there is a strong possibility that your husbands “hay fever” was an allergy to the common dust mite. It lives on the scales of skin that we shed all the time. Lots of Hoovering, don’t forget the bed, usually reduces or eliminates the problem. The mite also likes feather pillows and duvets so try changing them to synthetic if you don’t use them already.
I started with a new treatment for a pollen-based allergy. The treatment exists of a weekly injection and that for a duration of eight weeks prior to the pollen season.
I had my first injection today and I’ll let you know in a few months wether it worked out.
F*! I wanna go to that toy store!
Roy, did you receive the purifier yet? How does it work? Strangely I was just looking at them today and I must have missed this post previously….
Yes I did, they work very well and were worth buying, definitely. The ones I bought have a odor sensor which is very sensitive and cannot distinguish between good or bad smells, so if I cook anything it goes crazy.