As I recall, Japan is 100 V (not 110 or 120), 50 Hz east of Osaka and 60 Hz from Osaka westward.
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You’re the second person to think that I was supporting a move to 110v in here - so I probably wasn’t clear enough. My fault.
(Damn my dry humour, English understatement, and love of ‘Yes, Minister’ 
)
My main point was that even if we wanted, it wasn’t something we could do now, or even in post-brexit - even ten or twenty years out! (Which usually means ‘never’ in UK politics)
So please do at least chuckle wryly at the idea as presented - it was my intention! 
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Every time I go over there I get convinced I just need to buy the right kettle. Two days later I realize it’s the 220 and I think that I could just run a single circuit to the kitchen I’d be fine with that. And then I remember the sink. And the GFI. And the codes.
And then I just keep the one we have.
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240VAC cords, outlets and heating elements are all readily available everywhere in the USA, and you’ve probably already got 240 at the service panel… just saying…
And actually in my US state, it’d be perfectly legal for me to install a British 240vac RCD outlet in my kitchen so I could use a British electric kettle. It would be like the inverse of a shaver plug!
I wouldn’t be allowed to rent rooms or sell the house unless I removed it first, though. Our local code will let me do quite a bit of electrical stuff without licensing or inspections as long as my insanity and/or incompetence only endangers my immediate family.
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Unless it’s olives. Then it’s completely acceptable. Especially if they are stuffed with pimentos.
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We’re pretty maxed out on the panel as it is. I’d have to pull out one circuit from something and take the only spare one I have to run it. Doesn’t seem worth it for the kitchen kettle.
Thinking about it, I suppose I could steal from the A/C, but again, doesn’t seem worth it.
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Come to think of it, how come batteries don’t follow the “pins to power” rule? (i.e. pins sticking out of a connector point towards the source of power.) It’s not a big problem for household alkaline cells, but shouldn’t car/marine/aircraft batteries have female connectors?
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Whenever you see a headline saying that someone shot himself or a baby or whoever while “cleaning his gun,” it’s a safe bet you can replace “cleaning” with “drunkenly fucking around with.”
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That’s because building codes changed to 4-wire for 240V recently enough that there are a lot of legacy 3-wire outlets still installed and grandfathered in. More saliently, the manufacturer doesn’t need different SKUs for different regions and outlet standards, they can sell the exact same dryer or electric stove worldwide and leave it to the customer to get it hooked up.
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This is gonna be obscure.
I went to a store before going to the UK, and the only plug adapters they had for British recepticles were two pronged, not three. For those of us that don’t know, even if it isn’t used electrically, the ground provide a mechanical safety. If the ground isn’t inserted, it won’t physically let you insert the plug.
When the dude I was talking to mentioned they only had two pronged adapters, and just shove an object in the ground, I gave him a stare that melted his face.
“You want me to stick a fork in an outlet?”
“No, just the one bit”.
I felt bad, and of course I’ve used that trick. (Bamboo chop sticks, but I would never recommend it)
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I’ll cough to having shoved bare wires directly into a socket to test something. 
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It was dark, and I guided a plug into a socket basically blind. And my fingers brushed both leads.
The lamp was busted, I was knocked back five feet, and I had the privilege of replacing a breaker.
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It’s the ground pin… every time you touch your microwave you have your finger on a piece of metal plugged directly into that hole. I wouldn’t sweat it. Technically you can shove a key into 2 out of the three holes with no ill effects, but I would advise against trying out the neutral prong because of a number of reasons having to do with not knowing if your wiring is up to code and what cheap Chinese appliances you might have plugged in. But it should be at the same potential difference to you as the ground prong.
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We changed the rubber seal on a washing machine and forgot to unplug it first. Not the smartest thing I’ve ever done.
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I dck around a lot with broken, shty small kitchen appliances. RCD’s have saved my arse once or twice. 
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As I mentioned upthread, I have a 240V outlet in my kitchen for the espresso machine. As for a teakettle, when I moved back to the US from the UK the second time I decided I really needed a decent kettle, and did manage to find one (a Bosch) that heats water fairly quickly on 120V; not as quickly as did my kettle in England, but not far off.
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Remember Sniglets? (words that should be in the dictionary but weren’t)
There was a sniglet for the act of finding the socket in the dark by waiting until you were shocked to know the play was oriented to the socket properly.
I wanted to say it was flugging but the only list of Sniglets I could find did not have it.
And Urban Dictionary definition of flugging is not what I remember.
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And now I know the real reason, electric kettles.
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Oh, I did it. But it circumvents the entire point of the mechanical safety device. 
️
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