Company Unveils ‘Human Refrigerator’ to Combat Extreme Heat

In the middle of another brutal Japanese heatwave, someone finally said the quiet part out loud: if the planet is going to keep getting this hot, maybe we should just start putting people in refrigerators.

Enter the Do Hiemon Box — a full-size, walk-in cooling booth that looks like it escaped from a vending-machine factory and decided to start cooling humans instead of canned coffee. Developed by refrigeration company SDRS and sold by industrial supplier Trusco Nakayama, the stainless-steel unit hit the market in April and is already showing up at construction sites, warehouses, and even city halls across Japan.

how it works:

you open the glass door, step inside, sit down, and get hit with a blast of 5°C air aimed straight at your head, neck, shoulders, and back. The whole booth stays at a steady 15°C. Five minutes in and most people say they feel dramatically cooler. Ten minutes is enough, according to the company, to take the edge off heat exhaustion. After 20 minutes it automatically shuts itself off so you don’t accidentally turn into a human ice cube.

The thing is surprisingly practical. It plugs into a regular outlet, uses about half the power of a standard portable AC, and costs roughly 16 yen an hour to run — less than a can of soda from one of the vending machines that inspired its design. It rolls around on wheels, can handle light rain, and doesn’t need any permanent installation. The price tag, though, is pure industrial: 1.5 million yen (about $9,200) before tax. This is very much a workplace tool, not a backyard novelty.

Japan has been baking this summer. Temperatures have repeatedly smashed past 40°C, hospitals have been flooded with heatstroke cases, and the government even coined a new phrase for days that feel “cruelly hot.” In that climate, a giant fridge you can sit inside starts looking less like a gimmick and more like a survival tactic.

One unit has already been installed in Maebashi City Hall for public use. More than 150 have been sold so far, mostly to companies that need a fast way to cool workers between shifts. Whether the Do Hiemon Box becomes a permanent fixture or just a strange footnote of the 2026 heatwave is still unclear. But for now, Japan has answered rising temperatures with a very literal solution: when it’s too hot outside, climb into the fridge.