chindogu
n.— «In Japan, the designer Kenji Kawakami promotes wacky gadgetry as an art he calls “chindogu”—literally “weird tools,” but more humorously translated as “unuseless inventions.”» —“For Every Predicament, a Thingamajig to Solve It” by John Strausbaugh New York Times Mar. 21, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
Sean in Oneonta, New York, says that when he was growing up in New Jersey, his family would pile in the car and set off on a surprise adventure, whether a short distance or long, and the kids would be told only that they were going on Buxtehude...