Not exactly topical but one present which I got from my sister and brother-in-law while home at Christmas was a spinning fork (I should add that this wasn’t all they bought me!) which is designed for eating spaghetti and possibly even noodles. This could easily be considered a useless appliance and the kind of thing which may have featured in the ‘Useless Japanese Inventions’ book which I bought my dad for Christmas a couple of years ago.

  

These inventions go by the name of chindogu (of which some can be seen in the photos below) although no student I mentioned this to over the years has ever heard of the word! I tried to use the fork to eat a special White cup noodle bought a month ago but gave up fairly quickly. I didn’t fare much better a few days later when eating spaghetti pasta.