Here in Japan, a good headphone system is a must in order to deflect yourself from xenophobic adolescents who like to interrupt your walk with shouts of “Hello!”, sometimes from across the street. These are not necessarily friendly attempts at communication. Most of the time they are trying to illicit a reaction so their friends can laugh.

Any Western person who has lived in Asia has had this experience. If you are here for a cup of tea, one or two years, you might actually enjoy these interactions. I have known people who seem to seek them out. Not me. When I commute to work, run an errand, or go for a hike I want to zone out and block any chance of such an encounter from occurring. And a decent pair of headphones helps me get in an unbreakable zone of contentment.

Which brings me to this rather interesting Bluetooth winter hat I was gifted over the holidays. I’d like to refer to it by its brand, but this particular model doesn’t appear to have one. That’s a first for me. No brand listed anywhere in the instructions. No “Made in” label anywhere on the product. This quite literally might have fallen of a truck in China. Or India, based on the male model on the box. But never mind that. What could go wrong when invisible wireless technologies are whizzing around my head. Warranty not included!

The instructions are almost incomprehensible; a mixture of Google Translate and drunken carelessness. Luckily my years of correcting incomprehensible English “essays” by poorly instructed Japanese junior high school students gives me impeccable skills at parsing the incomprehensible, and extracting meaning. Yet surprisingly, it actually works! And pretty easily.

Just turn on your Bluetooth function on your device (I use an old Galaxy S2 as my podcast player). Then turn on the hat by holding down the play button for a few seconds. A robotic female voice will then say rather loudly that Bluetooth has been activated. And off you go. Any sound that your device produces is sent through the hat’s “headphones.” I use quotes because it is more like two small stereo speakers. The sound quality is decent but can be easily heard by others if the volume is even slightly turned up. Not the best for Japanese public transport where silence is a virtue.

Aside from the lack of sound containment, this winter hat is great for local snowshoe treks and long hours shoveling the endless Sapporo snow. It easily holds it’s charge seems to work rather reliably. As long as your device is within a few meters of your hat, decent quality sound can be piped strait into your brain – wirelessly.