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We built a steel rack taller than our crazy cheap country Japanese house with Daiso goods

Shannon Apr 13, 2023
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As Shia LaBeouf once said, “Just do it!”

In the Japanese workplace, many still follow a hierarchy system. Whatever your uppers or managers say goes. That means when your boss–in this case, SoraNews24’s founder Yoshio–tells you, “I want to build a steel rack that’s 10 meters (32.8 feet) tall,” you reply, “I want to build that, too.” No questions asked. And so said our Japanese-language reporter Masanuki Sunakoma.

What better place to build a 10-meter-tall steel rack than our crazy cheap country Japanese house? It’s an open space, no one is around to judge, and it would look really, really tall next to it.

Yoshio bought all of the supplies at Daiso: Joint Rack Shelves (300 yen or US$2.27 each), Joint Rack Extension Poles (100 yen each), and Joint Rack Base Parts (100 yen each). In all, his supplies cost…over 30,000 yen. Yikes, boss.

These racks are normally used for storage in home areas like the kitchen, and they’d also be pretty handy in a desk area. Masanuki thought of the shelves’ various uses as he and Yoshio painstakingly removed the tags from all of their supplies.

Then it was time to start building. They set up the base, added the first shelf, and wedged four extension poles into it using a small hammer.

They added another shelf and more extension poles, and, well, you get the picture.

This continued for quite some time.

Soon enough, they had a shelving unit well over two meters tall. “The spirit of SoraNews24 is doing silly things seriously,” Yoshio declared as he looked at their progress.

With neither Masanuki nor Yoshio quite reaching that height, they knew it would be too difficult to continue assembling it vertically. So, they laid it down and continued constructing it horizontally. The process of shelf, poles, shelf, poles was a bit mind-numbing for Masanuki, but he plodded on.

“How will we even get this thing to stand up?” Masanuki thought. After a while, though, he just wanted to be done.

▼ And then…

▼ Finally…

Ta daaaaa! They were done! The grand 10-meter steel rack was complete.

Now the problem arose of how to stand it up? There was no point in assembling it if they couldn’t stand it up vertically.

One could argue that it’s not even a steel rack at this point since it’s not even usable, but the SoraNews24 team doesn’t care. It must stand!

Their first strategy was to have someone lift it partway from the second floor of the crazy cheap countryside house. The other person would guide from the ground. Masanuki threw a rope to Yoshio. Can they do it!?

Nope. They were able to lift it, but it quickly became apparent that it was too much for the rack. It started to bend rather than rise.

When they lowered the rack after their failed attempt, they found that some of the poles had been dislodged in the process. Lifting was not in the books for this shelf.

▼ They repaired it with plastic rope in the meantime.

The second strategy was from Yoshio: lift it partway and rest it on an old tank at one end of the property. They could try lifting it gradually instead.

They shimmied their way to the tank, Yoshio at one end, Masanuki at the other.

They got it on the tank!

Now they just needed to use the momentum to stand it up all the way. Come on, muscles!

Nope, no dice again. However, they did realize that they were on the right track with the tank. If they could prop the whole thing up diagonally on a high surface, they could shimmy it up to a vertical position.

Third time’s the charm, right? They started by having one person go down a small ledge at one end of the yard, while the other guided the upper racks to rest on the first floor’s roof.

Level one: complete! Now to get the rest of it up.

With one person guiding it over the second floor’s roof…

▼ …and pushing really, really hard…

▼ …they did iiiiit!

▼ Here’s a normal rack (on the right) for comparison.

▼ Their new Daiso creation stretched up far, far higher than they thought it would.

▼ Pretty cool, right? ….right?

It was easily taller than the house. They celebrated their victory with some commemorative photos.

“Look, it’s usable!” Masanuki and Yoshio seem to say, but we all know it’s not true.

After observing it for a while, they concluded it looked more like a contemporary art piece than a functional shelf. Who would have thought some Daiso racks could create literal art?

▼ If you want to see the process in video form, watch below (Japanese subtitles only)!

Yoshio thinks “Idiot’s Rack” would be a good name for this piece. What do you think? Let us know if you have any good ideas. In the meantime, Yoshio and Masanuki will be doing more work on the countryside house. The fate of the 10-meter steel rack? Only they know.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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