watashi to tokyo

Kazuo Umezu

Sometimes I wrote about Kazuo Umezu who is well known horror manga and gag manga creator and also had a trial because neighbors sued his trade mark "red and white" damaged the scenery. He is such hot guy and now a documentary fild about him has released "Gashi (his way of say hello) I am Kazuo Umezu". I guess he is just a nice guy. By the way, I found some photos of inside Umezu house, I like that chandelier.It has Orochi images.

I found Google real time translation works very fine. Good points is they use very natural Japanese. It translate hunguy = harapeko, it's very caual way to say. I typed convenient store but it translates "konbini" (conveni) in Japanese, it's much natural for Japanese. I love it!

I found two nice arts events in NY that I would love to go : "Waste Not" and "Makeshift Museum Shows Off Mario Oddities"

Toto strated their high tech toilet live show. The site is live camera in Toto show room in Shiodome buidlding. They have started only a few contents though,I will check it later again.

New meme, his walltet is velcro type

名コピペ (Mei copipe)" means "nice copy and paste," which describes funny jokes or stories on the internet that people then copy and paste to their own blog or on Twitter, so the story gets spread around on the net quickly to become a kind of meme. One well known "mei copipe" on the net in Japan is "My boyfriend uses a velcro type wallet. What a ****!" The story is about a couple who went to a nice restaurant in nice clothes and enjoyed a nice dinner. But when it was time to pay the bill, the guy smugly said "I’ll pay" and took out his wallet. The wallet was a cheap velcro type and the noise of the opening velcro echoed across the restaurant. Girls loved the story and agreed with the girl's feeling. Guys also sympathized with the BF, adopting a "never mind" mentality. I often see this Ascii art or an imitation of it on the internet. I knew someone made an original song and played it on nico nico doga. Today I read that someone made it into an iPhone app. So silly.

chocolate model cell phone

This video healed me a lot today...  

 

「んだ～バカヤロウ」... It's very hard to translate such bad words in a polite manner. I can say that it means "What? Fu** you!" Anyways, that is the name of a bar in Nagoya where you can release stress. For a fee, you can beat somebody's head in with a beer bottle (not regular bottle, an extra fragile one) or pour water on someone like in Flashdance :-) etc. I don't have any interest in it though. I don't think I could release my stress by doing such things... My stress might be darker and deeper. :-(

NTT Docomo collaborated with jewelry maker Qpod and released this chocolate cell phone. Not just the cell phone, but the earphones, straps, and other accessories are cute too. Of course I don't need it.

If I have to use a strap for my cell phone, I would prefer this "fresh shrimp" one. If you pull a string, the shrimp moves as if it's alive. The same maker released this one too: clam water pistol. Hmm…what silly products.

The Japan Packaging Design Award 2009 event will be held in Dic Color Square. When someone buys something just because the packaging is nice, we call it "pake gai" (I wrote about this before but I can't find the post anymore). When I search for "pake gai" in Google images, I can find the type of packaging that people love. Seiko-tei's cookies are well known as gifts that girls like to buy. I think this one was chosen for some award this year. I like this one, it's a tin that contains Shiseido Parlour cakes. Shiseido Parlour was the first place to sell soda and ice cream in Japan. Since they are the parent company of cosmetic maker Shiseido, their packaging is beautiful and feminine.

Yusaku Matsuda 20th memorial

Black Rain(1989) is an American movie directed by Ridley Scott, starring Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia. But For Japanese, the movie is well known as the posthumous work of Yusaku Matsuda.

He started his career as an action star and became famous after being in the comedy action TV drama "Tantei Monogarati (The detective story)". People loved his offbeat character very much and his style of acting acting influenced a lot of fellow actors. In the 90s he was elevated to the ranks of Japan's most talented actors and he got a Japanese oscar for his role in "Kazoku Game"

He knew he had cancer during the shooting of Black Rain and he died the next year in 1990. It is his 20th memorial year and a documentary film about him, called "Soul Red", will be released.

Don't laugh series; "don't laugh at SPA"

I found this TV program, "can't laugh at SPA". It's one of "Don't laugh series". Someone add English subtitles. Some part might be hard to catch, but most part will be understandable. Try it.

Drunk people

Did you watch this video? This is very hot among the Japanese blogs. Since my American friends said that America and Canada have strict rules about public drunkenness, I thought that it’d be rare to see drunk people in public. In Japan, you can see a lot of drunk people all over Tokyo at night.

Anyways, for Japanese people (including me), the instinct to go home is very powerful. Even if we’re so drunk we can't stand or sit down, we try to catch a train to go home to sleep in our own beds. Here is a good video.

This s an idea for sleeping boxes at the Beijing International Airport. Japanese businessmen could spend the night comfortably in there, because it looks bigger than the pods in a capsule hotel. Here is a report of a capsule hotel.

I love this! It’s not just Asians that make funny Engrish mistakes! This one was found in Latvia: "Easy to go, Hard to live." Ha ha ha ha

A new eternal series toy has been released. We had eternal puchi-puchi, eternal edamame, and eternal pull-off tab. This time, it's eternal tokoroten, Tokoroten is a kind of sweet Japanese jelly. It’s made in this manner. On the internet, some people say that it’s like squeezing a zit, right? You know the feeling. Ha ha ha

new street computing style in Akihabara

There is a new phenomenon in Akihabara... a standing typing style called "Koike Style" (named after Mr. Koike, who was the first to do it). Anyways, why don’t they just use an iPhone?   

Tatsuya Ichihashi was finally arrested today. His cosmetic surgery “after” photo was pretty shocking to us, and all Japanese people kept a lookout for him.

This is another Japanese curry fan's post, she wrote down her recipe too. She cooks curry udon, but penne or macaroni or Chinese noodles are good too. If you make the curry sauce a little bit thick (using less water), it would be good with bread too; you can make a hot sandwich. Curry is really good for chilly winter nights, try it.

 

Lipton Tea started a new sweets collection. This is the 7^th series and this time, they collaborated with DAMEL. When you buy a bottle of Lipton tea, you can get one of those dessert keychains. Since they are exquisitely designed, the Lipton sweets collection is a very popular series and there are a lot of collectors.
The 1st series was Pierre Herme.
The 2nd was Westin Tokyo teatime.
The 3rd was the sweets collection.
The 4th was Pierre Marcolini.
The 5th was the sweets collection II.
The 6th was Delray.
They can be good free souvenirs :-).

This is a funny site: "create the facial _expression on a real face." The upper right one is "eyes turning round," which means "to marvel at something" in Japanese. Eyes turn into dots has almost the same meaning. Can you catch the meaning of each phrase from the face? How about this? We say "the face below the nose sinks down," which sort of means "be soft on women" or "thinking of something ecchi!"

Axolotl bowl

Ferrari will open a theme park in Dubai in 2010 and this is the design of the park. I, along with many other Japanese people, think of the Angels from Neon Genesis Evangelion when I look at that design. Apparently it's the seventh Angel, Israfel, right?   

 

   

I love monjya yaki. I know, it looks like quot;puke" (sorry), but it tastes very good. It's a little bit sticky, so we use a small flat paddle to serve it. I heard that a monjya yaki izakaya opened in Shimokitazawa, which is my favorite town. I will check it out soon.

We sometimes have animal booms in Japan. In the past, we’ve had had a chihuahua boom, a red panda boom, and then a frill-necked lizard boom because of this TV ad:

Axolotl were also very popular in the 1980s. Because of their funny faces, they became popular as a kimo-kawaii character. Since we have an international trade regulation, there are axolotol that are bred within Japan. In the 1980s, one axolotl cost about 15,000 yen or so, but now the price is only 1/10 of what it used to be. So a breeding factory started to market them for edible consumption. This is an axolotl donburi. They say it tastes like chicken. Hmm, I am not sure I would want to try it.

 

This is a funny (or serious) list of Google suggestions. When you search the word "husband" in Japanese at Google Japan, Google suggests the popular search terms "husband, hope he dies," "husband, hate," "husband violent with words," "husband, fired," "husband, die, pension," and other negative phrases. On the other hand, when you search for the word "wife," the first suggestion is "wife, birthday gift" and the next is "wife, birthday gift ranking." Husbands are looking for gifts for their wives! Hmm… what a sad reality for Japan.

poor bear

I love to play cards. I wish I could play cards with my friends sometimes on the weekend, but it's hard to find card fans around me! My favorite card game is Daihinmin (Rich Man Poor Man), and you can play it on the Internet here. Try it.

 

I was surprised to see this because I thought it was a new type of creature, but it's just a poor hairless bear... He would love this bear sleeping bag.

I often read that this country doesn’t make people rich or happy at all, this is a good article by Asahi: "The poverty rate in Japan."

Koakuma Ageha is a magazine for bar hostess type girls. Generally, they wear dresses and have big "mori" hair like this. And this month, Ageha recommends a new type of hairstyle that features big hearts made of braids. Really, are they serious? Insane...

Ahhh… I was hooked on this strawberry ice cream bar that looks so gorgeous! It's a special available at "Circle K," a convenience store. In winter, expensive, high quality ice creams sell better than in the summertime. Actually, I tend to choose creamier, heavier ice creams in winter when I crave flavor, not the chill. My favorite three ice creams in the supermarket are: Yukimi Daifuku, Choco-flake bitter and Choco-Zaku (chocolate with crunchies in a puffed rice shell). I love this mochi ice cream with red bean one too.

tracing collection

This post is a collection of old Japan maps from around the world. The first one is Belgian and was made in 1595. What a good job! How did they figure out the unique shape of the land in the old days? I can't understand it at all.

These pictures are different but very similar. We call a phenomenon "tracing" in internet slang. This is a tracing collection that I enjoyed during my lunch today.

I love this. I don't know why, but it's close, right?

 

This is hilarious! Booty and onigiri!

 

I know, I know that having bad teeth is looked down upon in foreign countries. However, in Japan, many people think that it’s kind of charming in girls. This site celebrates “vampire toothed” girls. What do you think?

Alice sent me this interesting article: "Girly men of Japan just want to have fun." Sometimes when I read such article about Japan: girly men, guys and 2D love, Japanese boys wearing skirts etc. I think… these are true, but of course it's just some phenomenon, not a real tread.