Is covering your entire upper body with cooling strips enough to fend off Japan’s summer heat?

Mr. Sato thinks it might be, and when was the last time he had an idea that didn’t pan out? “All right everybody, patch me up!” As loyal readers know, some very strange things can happen at SoraNews24

Mr. Sato thinks it might be, and when was the last time he had an idea that didn’t pan out?

“All right everybody, patch me up!”

As loyal readers know, some very strange things can happen at SoraNews24 headquarters. Even by our standards, though, it was pretty startling to see our ace reporter** Mr. Sato** whip off his shirt and issue this command to everyone in earshot. Of course, he had a perfectly logical reason for his behavior, or at least a perfectly Sato-like reason for it, so let’s go back a few steps and follow his thought process.

For a while there, it felt like we were in for a mild summer in Japan this year. The June “rainy season” had been cooler and dryer than usual, and even once we’d gotten into July the temperature and humidity were still pretty tolerable. But since about a week and a half ago, it’s like the weather has been making up for lost time, with a massive heat wave mercilessly baking much of the country with consecutive days with daytime highs over 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit).

This had all of us looking for relief from the heat, and Mr. Sato’s first instinct was to go out on the office balcony and try to intimidate the sun itself into going easier on us.

▼ “Hey, sun! Give it a rest already, will ya? You want me to have to smack you around a little, huh?”

Unfortunately, due to Mr. Sato lacking the necessary arm length to make good on his threat and/or the sun lacking ears with which to hear it, the hot weather continued. So it was back to the drawing board, but thanks to his uniquely active brain, it wasn’t long until he hit on an even more promising plan than celestial violence.

Excited and energized by his own brilliance, Mr. Sato dashed out the door…

…and returned shortly bearing boxes…

…boxes of cooling strips.

Often called “Hiepita” (though that’s actually the name of one specific discontinued brand), these adhesive patches can be commonly found in Japanese drugstores and convenience stores. Originally marketed as a way to cope with fever symptoms, people also discovered that their cooling sensation can be a way to cope with weather-related heat as well. The orthodox way to use them is to place one, and only one, across your forehead, but with extreme weather calling for, in Mr. Sato’s judgement, extreme measures, he had a more ambitiously abundant strategy in mind, which brings us up to the point in this tale where he commanded…

“All right everybody, patch me up!”

Again, even on the Sato scale, this was a pretty weird one, and the initial response from the in-office staff this day was less than enthusiastic.

But Mr. Sato would not be denied.** “C’mon, get your butts in gear and get to patching!”** he ordered, and while his insistence didn’t necessarily produce what you’d call obedience, it did convince everyone being press-ganged into this project that it’d be easier to just slap some patches on the guy than it would be to talk him out of it.

▼ “OK, let’s get this over with.”

“So we can just put ‘em wherever, right?” asked fellow reporter Seiji Nakazawa, but Mr. Sato quickly shot down such flippancy, rhetorically asking “Don’t you know you’re supposed to put your heart into this?”

▼ No, Seiji did not know that.

With his back now covered in cooling strips, the team thought that they were done, but Mr. Sato continued to stand there waiting. “Uh, you want us to do your front too?” asked P.K. Sanjun, triggering a snappy “Obviously!” from Mr. Sato.

“What do you mean ‘obvious’? You could do your front yourself, you know,” protested P.K., which earned him an exasperated “You don’t get it, do you? I want everyone to do this for me.”

At this point, we started to become unsure how much of this was a genuine attempt to cool down and how much of it was just a power trip, but one thing was clear.

Mr. Sato was feeling very good.

▼ “Yes! It’s happening! My own personal winter!”

In total, we had placed 68 cooling patches on Mr. Sato’s body. After basking for a few moments in the icy sensations, Mr. Sato once again headed towards the door, commanding us to follow for the second round of testing.

He remained comfortably cool as we rode the elevator down to the first floor of the building (though, to be honest, riding the cramped, slow, and shaky elevator in our building is always kind of a chilling experience).** After exiting the elevator, he strode confidently towards the door to the street to see if his cooling strip countermeasure could stand up to the powerful direct sunlight of a Tokyo summer afternoon**.

Granted, this isn’t the strangest attire one of our reporters has worn in public, but it’s still in the top 10. “From behind, it kind of looks like you’re wearing some sort of armor” observed Ahiruneko, to which Mr. Sato replied “I know, right?”

▼ We’re not sure how he knew what he looked like from behind, so we’re adding “Does he have eyes in the back of his head?” to the to-be-investigated topics in the Mr. Sato mystery file.

Finally, we arrived at the park near SoraNews24 HQ. Like a lot of small urban parks in Japan, it’s mainly concrete, gravel, and play equipment, with no grassy lawn and most of its trees only providing a thin strip of shade on the outside edge of its area.

The central section is basically its own little heat island, so it was here that Mr. Sato threw out his arms and dared the sun to do its worst.

“Hey, sun, that all you got, huh?”

“You aint so hot!”

“I can’t even feel you anymore! Bwahahahahaha!”

At this point, there are probably a few things that our lawyers would probably like us to point out, starting with the fact that, officially, we do not recommend Mr. Sato’s idea, especially on a regular basis. For one thing, heat is only one of the potential hazards presented by intense sunlight. UV rays are also a concern, and even if all those cooling patches were making Mr. Sato feel cool, the exposed gridwork of skin between them was still getting roasted. Another thing to keep in mind is that** cooling strips don’t always actually lower your body temperature to the same degree as the sudden sensation they provide would suggest**, so sticking six dozen or so of them on yourself isn’t really a safe way of avoiding heat exhaustion, as it’s not a substitute for proper hydration and staying out of direct sunlight during the hottest parts of the day.

On the other hand, a single cooling strip, perhaps attached to your back or chest where it can be covered by clothing, can be quite refreshing. As for whether the absurd amount Mr. Sato used is a smart idea, well, he did feel very cool standing in the park…

…but he also ended up trying to have an extended conversation with the sun itself, so if you don’t want to fry your brain, there are better ways to cope with the summer heat.