A fire alarm is clearly a very useful thing to have for safety reasons, but you have probably never thought about the impact that it would have on the deaf because, clearly they are going to be unable to hear it when there is danger. Well, the Japanese have come up with a pretty cool way for a fire alarm to alert those that are deaf, and it led to them winning all kinds of awards for their genius way of approaching a very real issue.
In the fire alarm for the deaf, the alarm releases Wasabi into the air, well it is Japanese, so the deaf person is then able to sense that there is a fire and they need to evacuate. You have to admit that this is a very different way of tackling the issue, but the most important thing of all is that it works and is capable of saving lives.