Mari - diary

"Japanorama"

Did you read this post of wired? "NASA Offers $5000 a Month For You to Lie in Bed" It's impossible for me. I can't stay on bed even a one day.

I picked this video to show nigo's house before, but I didn't know that it came from this UK TV "Japanorama". Did you know that UK TV show? They show many weird Japanese sub culture.

I remember well I ate cheese fondu at swissland, it was delicious but super expensive! I did oil fondu at my firend's party and every fried food is delicious of course. Then I will try this chocolate fondu next time. Put a choco into micor oven and dip some snack! I guess Doritos will be nice.

I will go to complete physical examination next week, I must have it once a year and my company pay it for me. I will have it before I quit my job. Since this year, they will check metabolism of our body. One of baseline is waistline. Guy has more than 85cm (34inchi), woman has more than 90cm(36inchi) of waistline has to be said "metabolic symdrom". By the way, complete physical examination is called "human dock" in Japan. Are we ship??? But I think it's charming name.

He has gone

Ahhhh, so cool. I want this: 'Knife hook'.

I know I shouldn't laugh, but I can't help but laugh when I read this news: 'Priest's helium balloon flight goes wrong'. I hope he is floating somewhere in the ocean too.

Wazakura Kobo makes unique Japanese design keyboards. Zipang is a keyboard covered by gold leaf. Wazakura has a cherry blossom design. I like this honkawa, it is made from real leather. After a while, the leather will shine and become a nice color like a well-worn leather bag.

I often mentioned that I love Kuniyoshi Ugawaga and picked his artwork sometimes. My favorite Ukiyoe is Kingyo Zukushi and today, I found this: Kuniyoshi's Kage (shadow pictures). The shadow looks like a goldfish, but it is really a fox and his.... it's funny. I really love Kuniyoshi.

This is the official site of the new DS game 'ikatan' that will be released in autumn. The picture is of Surume (dried shredded squid). There is no information about what kind of game it is. Hmm do I roast Surume? Or when I scratch the touch pen, I can smell Surume?

Great handmade Knits

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Cute!!!! Great handmade Knits.

I really love this site 'YOUNG ME NOW ME'. So many great photos. I like this one.

On May 3rd and 4th, a T-Shirt summit will be held at the Tokyo Science Technology museum. You can buy many rare and funny T-shirts with nice designs.

I am not sure what this is, but maybe these are Swedish TV commercials of some snacks 'Hot Tub, stop hungers'. You can see a Japanese version on the right. There are two aquarium tanks, each with a lot of piranha inside. One tank is hungry and one is full from the snack. They put expensive watches into the tanks and people try to get it....The piranha on one side are not dangerous because they ate snacks already, but the other side is.... I am not sure what was point of this ad, but at any rate I can tell the narrator is not really Japanese and the people in the ad are not Japanese too. The American version is worse.

Customers who bought this item also bought.......

I often read articles that someone commited suicide by hydrogen sulfide in Japan. I couldn't understand why they can get such a poisonous gas, then some said a manual "how to make hydrogen sulfide from some toilet cleaner" was up on the Internet. Sanpore is a very well known toilet cleaner in Japan. Please check the Sanpore page of Amazon Japan and see "Customers who bought this item also bought.......orz. Those books are "suicide manual", "abscondence manual", "145 cases of suicide" ....

Nigo is the famous designer of A Bathing Ape. I am not sure who made this video, maybe BBC? They show Nigo's house. Wow great!!!

Manga zenkan.com is an online shopping site where you can buy entire manga series at once. Now they have released their best sellers from 2007. Here is the ranking of their the best 20.
1.Crows(1-26)
2.Nodame Cantabile(1-20)
3.Hanazakari no kimitachi he(1-23)
4.One-piece(1-49)
5.Dragon Ball(1-42)
6.Hanayori Dango(1-36)
7.Hana no yoshitzugu(1-15)
8.Slam dunk(1-31)
9.JoJo's Bizarre Adventure(1-63)
10.Worst(1-19)
Naruto (1-41) is No.12, Death Note(1-12) is No.13. *

Britney 's new music video

You knew already, 'Britney Spears gets into toon' in her next song video. I checked this morning and I was a little bit surprised to see that あれ！攻殻じゃん！Did you see that? If not, check this site. Pass is 'victory' and 'danger'. You wil know that the music video seems to be a mixture of Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex 'inner universe' and the Ghost in the Shell classic movie

I am very relaxed and lazy at home this weekend. I will pick funny topics that I found on the net.

Tell me, those two topics are jokes, right? Not true stories, right? 'This is a joke right? Kansas woman sat on boyfriend's toilet for 2 years' No way, it is impossible to stay in the toilet for two years.

'A town in South America is living in fear after several sightings of a 'creepy gnome' that locals claim stalks the streets at night. ' What is that?? Of course it is Kemuru. He can skip faster than a police car basically. So I am glad to know they could survive.

I enojoyed this game 'shift'. Pretty good game.

Orita sensei

This is a cute "Aquafresh and tomato ketchup" font.

I wrote about Orita Sensei on my blog before. He was the first president of Daisan High School, which was the predecessor of Kyoto Univ. But his statue was often the target of a vandalism? Finally, the univ removed his statue. But during entrance examination season, Orita Sensei came back in various styles :-). Last year he was POKO chan. This was appropriate because we had the FUJIYA scandal and POKO chan is FUJIYA's mascot character. Two years ago, he became the character Maruko-chan. Three years ago, he appeared as Buddha. And finally, this year he appeared again in this style. Oh! Donburi man from Anpanman. I hope there are more surreal ones next year.

Arte Luise Kunsthotel is a theme hotel in Germany. Each room is designed by a different designer and each has a unique theme. This is "107: Mammels Traum", this has a bit of a scary mood : "106 Endmor ne Berlin". I don"t think I couldn relax here : "411 Standby". This room is called "306 Comic". The description reads: "A characteristic touch is that every corner and angle is outlined with a thin, hand-drawn, black line whether on the ceiling, on the bed, or around a plug. The result is a dollhouse-like, comic book room with papaya green walls, a sunny yellow rug, a lilac bed and a pink cupboard. Graphics and decorations by the artist complete the design." Outlines make things look like a comic? I found a great post on my favorite site Nifty portal z. He draws outlines on everything and he found that outlined faces could be comical and are very similar JOJO's posing. (their strange poses are well known right?) ha ha ha funny...

Chaku wiki - Japanese image for Texas

Look at this, ahh Cute! It's a photo of a prunus tree(Ume) and two Mejiros. The Mejiro is called the Japanese white-eye and they love Prunus tree. they love Prunus tree. I can't wait spring.

Today's crazy news from the U.S: Idaho man sees a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004115587_webhand09m.html" target="_blank">Idaho man sees "mark of the beast," cuts off and microwaves hand. I didn't know 666 is 666 is the number of the beast ( I have never watched Omen, impossible for me). In Japan, people don't like "4", because 4 is read "shi" (or yon ) and "shi" sounds like "death" in other Kanji. We think the number 8 is a lucky number, because 8 is written 八 in Kanji. The shape of this kanji broadens toward the end. It means we can have a good result, end, future for us. Chinese people love 8 too and I heard the car license 8888 is traded at an incredible expensive price.

I checked chaku wiki today. I love the site, I like to read each local legend or native masochistic information. For example, on the Tokyo page, someone writes about Tokyo castes. In Tokyo there are 23 wards and some cities but Tokyo people don't think those cities belong to Tokyo. For example, Machida is a city of Tokyo but since Machida is surrounded by Kanagawa pref, people don't admit it's Tokyo. And also even in 23 wards, there is a rank. The ward which is next to Saitama or Chiba pref can't be thought of as Tokyo.

But on the other hand, it is fun to read about Japan in other languages, because I can know foreign people's image and misunderstandings about Japan. Here is the English Japan page. Hmm, foreign people seem to have an image of Ninjya so far.

This is the Texas page in English and checked native people image for that area. Ha ha ha, it's Jesus Land! (Don't ask me why I picked Texas, he he. I just wanted to find a funny page :-), and maybe it will be...Then I checked Texas in Japanese, so that you may see the Japanese image and misunderstandings for that place.
-75% of Texas people can't understand NY English because it's so fast. -Big is great.
-Texas people ask Japanese people "how long it will take to Japan by car?"
-The language which babies in Texas learn first is " Attention! K-Mart shoppers!"
-When Texas people are asked to show their ID, they show their belt.
-Under 16 years old boys go to school by tractor.
There are more and more but I will stop. What do you think? Do they tell the right image of Texas? I think the Japanese who live in Texas or Texas people who can write Japanese wrote them. So real and funny. I may pick other cities and other countries next week sometimes.

Weird toys

Three funny foreign posts first.　This is a Greenpeace TV ad: "The sun shines out of his arse." I can't get the concept, but at least it's funny.　This is an article in the New Zealand Herald: "Pizza lockdown confuses tourist." Hmm, she needed it so much even in New Zealand. Sounds like Umeboshi for Japanese. (I can tell many Japanese trust Umeboshi to work for stomach problems and some take them to travel.) I remember American families ate Pizza more than Italian families. What do you think? I love Napoli pizza, because it's light, with more tomato and less cheese. My best Napoli pizza place in Tokyo is i-rottah in Meguro. Unfortunately good Italian pizza is expensive in Tokyo -- they cost 1500 yen or so. This is the Japan Pizza Hut's autumn special "ebi puri mayo" (shrimp mayo)...I can't find this menu item on the U.S Pizza Hut site. It's a Japanese original? Looks so heavy:-) I really love this site "Kitty wig." They look more artistic than this cat kitty cosplay kit.

The new movie Speed Racer will be released next spring. Here is the official site, check their trailer. Looks funny. I am not sure why this anime was so big in the U.S. I must say in Japan, it was not so special and actually I don't know the story well. By the way, the theme song of the TV show "Speed Racer" is the same as the Japanese original "Mahha Go Go". The meaning of the lyrics sounds the same. Check it out.

Softbank released the official site of the ZAKU head mobile phone "913SHG". Wow, its texture is much nicer than I supposed. I remember my brother tried to make a purposefully damaged Gundam model. Gunpla (that's what we call Gundam models) was a deep world. BANDAI had the GUNPLA EXPO last year. My friend went there.

Talking about models, I like this "stupid models" collection. Here are my bests.
The Poop of deer: Poops are paper fortunes too. You push his talk and get poop, and the poop tells your fortune. orz...
The mushroom and butterfly: Hmm, fancy? Lovely? Who would buy it?
The wild pig bowling: Ahh, the monkey was scared of it, look at the black wild pig. Weird.
Sushi cars: Boys love it? What was the concept? By the way, I prefer the egg one.
Guillotine: Is that okay? Of course recent violent TV games would be much worse, but since it is too realistic, I don't want it.
Talking about weird toys, this site picked some wired toys and most of them are Japanese!! Maybe the Japanese have a weird sense for jokes.

Japan Probe has a funny post. Which are cuter between Thailand new half and Japanese cute boys. Of course Thailand new half. They made a lot of efforts to be girls. But I realized the size of the neck is the point to tell women or men. Thailand new half has a very thin neck and they are important for beauty.

Donald taboo

Sorry I have no time to update the post today.  So I picked two pic of Donald.
See you tomowwo!!

Two??                                             Kick??

Taxidermy

In Japan, there are four "Public Sports" that are public-operated parimutuel gambling: horse racing, keirin (bicycle racing), auto race (motorcycle racing) and Kyotei (boat racing). Edogawa Kyotei is the boat racing place in Tokyo and they have a Goat robot to eat lost betting slips. Ha ha ha, good idea. It's funny, that robot looks real like taxidermy. Because of that, people who lost betting won't kick him even if they are in bad mood?

Talking about Taxidermy, I remember well the Wien Natural Historical Museum still now. It was a long, long time ago, I went there alone, it was an hour and a half before closing time on a very dark, cold winter day. There was nobody inside the museum and every floor was filled up with a huge amount of taxidermy: animal, reptilian, insects, ancient stuff. I felt all of that stuff concentrated on me.

These are the photos of the backyard of the American museum of natural history. All pictures are so nice and there in good art in the site. This site has photos of the backyard of the British Natural History museum. They look like artists waiting for a show backstage. Taxidermy photos are attractive and also weird. (especially taxidermy arts like this and this), so I'm always careful when opening these links.

I'll look at photos, but I won't have taxidermy. In auctions, some sell strange wallets like this and this. I won't be able to have such stuff. I would love to have a fake sheet and fake head as a good joke!! This is a little bad joke though. (Inside is too red!)