Is this for tea or dashi?
In Japan, Google has put on a fishy gag to celebrate a major tea ceremony while also getting back into April Fools’ spirit despite this day being 6 months out of place.
The Gboard teacup or yunomi is intended to prevent users from spilling tea onto their keyboards, thereby ruining them. The ceramic holder is meant to insulate a smaller 125ml metal cup from the 60 keys lined around it, snapped atop Kailh choc switches. Most of them feature kanji — Chinese characters that make up one form of Japanese writing — exclusively containing the radical (or lead component) that represents “fish.” There are also keys for punctuation and one not-so-subtly labeled “carp” that outputs the koinobori emoji (🎏) to show off traditional carp streamers.
As a rule, Google isn’t really in the business of selling ridiculous props like, say, potato chips, so it has released code and schemes for the Arduino-powered teacup onto GitHub for crafty people with 3D printers to make a Gboard yunomi on their own. Of course, you can go rogue on what the keys do.
For the Japanese, April 1st more commonly signals the start of new school and fiscal years, but April Fools’ Day has also been recognized and enjoyed to some extent. 9to5Google notes, however, that Google Japan, known for its rich history of fake product announcements on the day, held off on the annual tradition for both 2020 and 2021.
The yunomi was in development and production for about a year prior to its presumed original launch window of April Fools’ 2020, but was ultimately shelved (for obvious global reasons). Today is when the annual Kitano Daichayu (large tea party) takes place. The event dates back to 1587 celebrating the completion of Emperor Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s palace, the Jurakudai, as well as his ongoing conquest against external clans which would ultimately lead to the country’s unification under the Tokugawa shogunate.
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