Welcome to Hatsune Miku

These are photos of Japan in the 1800s. Only 200 years ago!

I caught a cold and I have been home for three days now. Yesterday and today, I went to the clinic, got checked for the flu and got tons of medicine. It cost 5000yen in total. I hope I can go to work tomorrow.

This is fun. Stare at the red dot for 30 seconds, look at a wall, and blink!

This is a news article about a false marriage which may be tied to a serial killer. A 34 year old woman scammed several guys for about 1 million dollars. Six of those guys died in mysterious ways. If she really did kill them, she would be the second most notorious female killer in Japan (the worst is Hiroko Nagata, a Japanese leftist radical). She and her deceased boyfriend had some blogs, so now people are trying to amass a cache of their blog posts on 2ch. Anyways, this incident will surely have an impact on single men and women interested in konkatsu (marriage hunting).

This was a little bit funny: Google’s translation tool uses different ways to translate text, sometimes using a statistical machine translation (I guess). So the system focuses more on the popularity of a translated word rather than its correct meaning. When you translate “miku” from English to Japanese, Google translates it as "Hatsune Miku" (a popular vocaloid character). So when you translate miku restaurant’s website into Japanese, it says "Welcome to Hatsune Miku!"

Seto is a Japanese design group in Kamakura. I found their unique bag. You fill in the dots using colored pens and make your own uniquely designed bag. I like this idea.

46 crocodiles escaped in China. And the government announced, "find them, we don't mind if you eat them!" I don't know how you feel about this, but I like it. It’s their Chinese power.

"Revoltech Expo 2009" is going on now. You can check out Kaiyodo's newly released items.

Comments

[Chris]

Even one escaped croc would be worrying -- 46! Haha, nice incentive for hunting down the crocs - since they're a threat to livestock and humans (though I'm not sure if farm-raised ones can still hunt out of the farm environment). Thanks for sharing the Youtube video too!

[bshock]

Technically speaking, just about all computer translation is based on statistics. (This subject is one of my hobbies.) You take a large number of sentences already translated from one language to another, and then you count how many times specific words match each other in the context of other words. There are many ways to do this, and so it appears Google can use a way that puts special emphasis on popular culture.

[Eddy]

Sorry to hear about the cold. Hope you get well soon Mari-san.

I did the trick with the red dot. Wow! I could see the face very clearly!