Shower Clean Suits: Kiss goodbye to dry cleaning 23 Apr 2008

With the first quarter of 2008 over, the Nikkei Marketing Journal has produced a round-up of the products that have taken Japan by storm so far this year. Top sellers include organic/home-made food (ho-hum), sugar-free beer (less fun than regular beer, but more fun than non-alcoholic beer) and the NTT Docomo/Panasonic P905i mobile phone (which has the capacity to stream a "One Seg" digital television signal to the handset's three-inch screen). However, what really caught our attention was the "Shower Clean Suit" range from men's clothing company Konaka.

As their name implies, "Shower Clean Suits" are designed to be cleaned using nothing more than your bathroom shower. No detergent is necessary and when you're done hosing them down, all you need do is hang them up in a shaded corner of your room to dry - no ironing is required. This is because the fabric is made from a special fibre that's punctured with miniscule holes which enable quick evaporation and prevent creasing. Lovely stuff!