Have you ever thought about crawling into a fridge on a really hot summer day? Japan might have gotten really close to making that happen.

A Japanese company has created the Do Hiemon Box, a person-sized booth designed to cool people instead of storing food or drinks. Made by SDRS and sold by Trusco Nakayama, it is roughly the size of a vending machine.

This special invention is meant to assist workers in hot environments by keeping them cool and lowering their chance of getting heatstroke.

A refrigerator, but for humans

The plan is easy: go in, take a seat, and let the machine help you cool down.

The Do Hiemon Box maintains an interior temperature of about 15 degrees Celsius, and the vents release air that is as cold as 5 degrees Celsius — similar to the temperature found in a refrigerator's chiller section.

The chilly air is blown toward the user's head, neck, shoulders, and back. The maker says people can feel much cooler after about five minutes.

The machine has three options for airflow and turns itself off after 20 minutes, so the person inside doesn't stay there too long.

A Vending Machine That Cools People, Not Drinks

The Do Hiemon Box is a bit more than two metres tall and about 93 centimeters wide, making it similar in size to a typical vending machine. It weighs around 293 kilograms.

Even though it has that weight, it doesn't have to remain in one spot. The booth has wheels so it can be rolled around, and all you need to set it up is to plug it into a power outlet.

That makes the machine ideal for places like construction sites, where workers often face high temperatures while working outside.

Cool the Person, Not the Whole Room

The Do Hiemon Box handles heat in a unique way. Instead of cooling the whole room with air conditioning, it blows cold air directly at the person.

The manufacturer says the booth costs about 16 yen each hour to operate and uses roughly half as much energy as a similar spot air conditioner.

From Cooling Drinks to Cooling People

SDRS is already used with refrigeration units and vending machines, but Do Hiemon Box uses that same technology in a new way: it focuses on the person in front of the vending machine instead of the drink inside it.

The product was sold in Japan in April, providing a unique solution to a big problem because hotter summers are causing more worries about heatstroke.

It might look like something made to keep drinks cool, but this time, the thing that's getting cooled is you.