It goes without saying, but raising children can bring you endless amounts of joy. Why else would you have the little rugrats unless there was something in it for you?
But mixed in with all the teasing, the joyous moments, and the frivolous fun is a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and pain.
Being a parent is hard work and sometimes this translates into sheer physical pain. When you're constantly running around with your little ones and just generally trying to keep up with their seemingly relentless energy levels, your back is probably going to bear the brunt of your efforts.
Well, if you're in the same boat, you might want to consider trying one particularly creative technique which worked a charm for father Ken Kawamoto. The Google software engineer's son is obsessed with trains and he devised a clever plan to use his son's passion to trick him into giving him a back massage.
Credit: Twitter / Ken Kawamoto
And how exactly did he do that?
Well, he designed a train track-imprinted t-shirt to allow his son to run his toy trains over. And so when Kawamoto is wearing it, the motion of the trains works as a substitute for a massage. Aside from the train track, the white t-shirt is also imprinted with some station signs and even a pond.
In fact, Kawamoto even tweeted a video showing the train track t-shirt in motion.
The video was posted last month and has, as of this writing, garnered an impressive 1.22 million views.
Not only does the cunning father get a free massage, but he also gets a little bit of relaxation time in which he isn't expected to do much more than lay down while his son has a blast with his toys.
Kawamoto refers to his crafty creation as "the t-shirt that gets you a massage from your kids just by plopping down on the floor".
Credit: Twitter / Ken Kawamoto
Each of the tracks is marked by either of the following station signs: "right shoulder", "left shoulder", "spine", and "lower back" which allows him to command the 'conductor' to direct the train wherever he's feeling the most pain.
And if you feel like you could benefit from a t-shirt like this, well, then listen up:
The t-shirt is now available online from 2,400 yen ($22) ranging from size S to triple XL.
I mean, that's a bargain considering the years of free back treatment you could potentially get in return.