Mari - diary

insect cartoon

I read the UK band "The Get Out Clause" was so poor so that they make their music video form video of security camera, here is the video.

This is so funny, "road kill toys". If I give this rabit to my friends as their bithday gift, how many people will be happy? At least I won't be happy but I want to give it to somebody.

Did you read about "green porno" of Isabella Rossellini? You can see the making video on sundance official page. Hmmm I don't know what should I say... Talking about insects, we have many cartoon of insects ; "Honeybee Hutch".(I found this Bashar?! . They change the name of Hutch to Bashar?! I don't know which country is this.), "Maya the Bee" and my favorite one is "Microid S". I don't know that cartoon was aired in foreign countries. The original was Osamu Tezuka's manga. For me, the coolest theme song of Tezuka cartoon in Japan is Triton of the Sea (from wiki). And I am thinkig to read Budda again in this my holidays.　I wish he made Jesus Christ and Allah too, so that I can understand those religion more. :-)

I will try this place Shoyu (Soy sauce) restaurant"". You can try various type of soy sauce and they serve some food with soy sauce base. Especailly I want to try "KOGASHI SHOYU fondue". Kogashi shoyu meanse burned say sauce. If you like Japanese food, let's imagine Mitarashi Dango, Yaki Onigiri and Yakitori, you would know a little bit burned soy sauce is great. In Japan, burned soy sauce can be a sales point for soy sauce base ramen too. I will report when I try the restaurant.*

Rainy Saturday

Good TV ad from Italy :-)

This is a funny post: 'Is Okami The Worst Box-Art Gaffe Ever?'. I think MEGA MAN (rock man?) is much worse and Star Chess looks like a painting that I drew in art class when I was 10 years old.

I found this news today: 'Gillian is terrified of buttons'. I wonder if buttons would be related to some bad experience for her and she might have forgetten it.
Did you know this 'Flogos' ? It's a bubble AD on the sky. I found the video os flogs today. Here it is.

I will go to Tokyo Mid Town tonight for dinner, and maybe I will try 'Okawari'. Okawari means 'one more helping'. After one bowl of rice, we say 'okawari!', then you will get one more bowl of rice. At Okawari, you can pick foods from various types of small shops. If you like, you can choose a piece of Pizza + miso soup + a piece of Tempra. :-)

Sushi Prince

Wired.com Exclusive: Watch 'Wanderlust,' Bjork's New 3-D Video. Hmmm, interesting. Do you know she protested to China about the Tibet issue in concert in China? She won't be able to enter that country again for a while. I appreciate her valiant attitude. Today someone wrote a bomb warning on the Nagano Station page and the Beijing Olympic page of Japanese wikipedia. Zenkoji temple is in Nagano, it may be related to that issue. Zenkoji had graffiti spray-painted a few days ago. I hope the warning is just a bad joke.

This is the official site of Sushi Prince goes to NY. It's a crazy comedy movie about a Japanese Sushi chef. Look at this trailer. Ha ha ha so silly. That prince is Koichi Domoto of Kinki Kids. He is a popular idol of Johnny & Associates. I thought Kinki Kids would fit for the cast of Death Note film, Koichi could be Kira, Tsuyoshi could be L.
Today I found some funny foreign sites and no domestic ones.

This is today's best site 'LSD vs Alcohol vs Tree'. Cute!! I laughed at IKEA, Lenin, Schwarzenegger...ha ha ha.

Andy sent me this cute site : 'Animals on the underground'. Since Tokyo has a more complicated subway map, we may find a lot of animals. Hope someone tries it.

I thought it would be an initiation of a new cult in the Blue cloak. But it was 'Record-breaking Mentos and Coke explosions' news. Here is the video (so so).

This is a funny flash game 'Billy Suicide'. Help him and stop his suicide. I could't stop it and he shut his head in the toilet. ....orz

This is "the 10 Most Comfortable Airline Economy Seats". Wow JAL is ranked in?? I agree that flight attendants are so kind and food is okay but I am not sure about the facility. By the way, do you know you can eat CUP NOODLE in JAL if you ask them? Please try when you are so hungry. They will give you one. I love using Singapore Air because their food is good. Here is my post of the ranking of airline food.

Domokun

Waaa Cute!! I love House Martin series. Bright Idea is cute too.

Domo kun is a character of NHK Network. What is he? I don't know, he is a strange creature who likes rice. His TV animation is getting popular and is aired in 64 countries in the world. Here is an official site.

Softbank will release a transformers-like cell phone 815TPB. Its main feature is the cell phone transforms into a robot with special parts and also the robot will talk to its owner because it is an intelligent learning type. This post tell the details of features. I think the Char type was a good idea. But this??? I don't think so.

Ha ha ha. This is funny. I mentioned SMAP is a very very popular idol group in Japan but they sing soo bad, tooo bad, they could never improve their singing ability. Actually I almost get a headache when hearing their songs. But since they are so super popular group in Japan, their bad singing was a sort of an untouchable issue. However, I read this funny article. TOTO guitarist Steve Lukather got mad at their singing when he appeared on SMAP's variety show SMAPxSMAP.

Nifty Portal Z has a funny post today. I picked food samples in my blog sometimes, they're food samples for display in the show window of restaurants. We can see them everywhere in Japan, but I have never seen them in foreign countries. (Tell me if you have them in your country.) By the way, since the samples are made from wax, of course we can't eat them, but she tried to make edible food samples with good ideas. Put some oil on Sushi and it looks like a food sample. Gelatinated Curry looks like a food sample. And frozen pasta looks like a food sample (yes, this one!). Ha ha, funny.

I will go to Tokyo

I wrote Zenkoji refused to host the Olympic torch relay and there are some threats on the Internet for Zenkoji, but Zenkoji said they won't resort to legal action now as sad joke. I am glad to read such comments of Zenkoji. They don't upset so easily.

Ora Tokyo Sa Ikuda (I will go to Tokyo) was released over 20 years ago. It is hot on Youtube again as a Japanese first RAP in Aomori dialect . Its lyrics are funny, he is such a country boy and wants to go to Tokyo. But we have a lot of such country country country areas still now (maybe they have TV already though) in Japan. It will be nice to visit such a place, you will know the real Japan.

I am not sure what you call this insect (if you don't like insects, don't open) in English. I guess it will be Bathynomus doederleini. We say 'Daio Gusoku Mushi', Nifty Portal Z made its stuffed animal. Look at this. Cute???

'What does moe mean?' is an English lesson book in which Japanese explain about moe culture in Akihabara. The situation is a Japanese person visits Akihabara with his foreign friend and explains everything in English. But it will be good as a moe culture book for foreign people too. I will find it in the book store and report about it :-)

Prefecture Brand Power

Great! This is LEGO SHIBUYA. Look at this! Can you believe this is LEGO? They didn't miss the Hachiko! (what is Hachi?)｡｡Here is Asakusa too. 見てみたい！

Japan has 47 prefectures and maybe around 700 cities. Do you know some? Can you tell some city names? Usually Japanese can tell all prefectures but it is not an easy job.　Nikkei Reserch has released an interesting report: 'The ranking of prefecture brand power in Japan'. They made the ranking from results of a survey on various points like recognizability, people's will to visit, will to live, uniqueness, etc. Here is the result.
1.Hokkaido
2.Kyoto
3.Okinawa
4.Osaka
5.Tokyo
6.Kanagawa
7.Hyogo
8.Fukuoka
9.Kagoshima
10.Nara
Hokkaido has the greatest quality and quantity of nature in Japan, and it is rich with good foods (not particularly cooking, just materials like sea foods or potatoes) but as brand value. I thought Kyoto (as the most historical place) or Okinawa (unique foods and warm nice weather, unique culture from their independent or occupied history) would be No.1.

But on 'The ranking of city brand power', Kyoto is No1 and No2. is Yokohama. Here is the results.
1.Kyoto (Kyoto)
2.Yokohama (Kanagawa)
3.Kobe (Hyogo)
4.Sapporo (Hokkaido)
5.Kamakura (Kanagawa)
6.Hakodate (Hokkaido)
7.Uji (Kyoto)
8.Fukuoka (Fukuoka)
9.Nagasaki (Nagasaki)
10.Furano (Hokkaido)
Kyoto, Kanagawa and Hokkaido are each powerful cities. Most of them are old historical places and also they had important ports for trading with foreign countries.

And they told the worst prefecture too: it was Tochigi. Do you know Tochigi prefecture? Do you know where it is? Tochigi is in the Kanto area above Saitama. Actually Japanese know about Nikko but they don't know Nikko is in Tochigi. I must agree Tochigi is a much less impressive pref. Then the Tochigi Association of corporations asked for ideas about a Tochigi catch-phrase. Well, the strongest one would be 'forgotten prefecture'.

Anyway, when I checked the wikipedia, I found this post : 'List of records of Japan'. I didn't know Japan has some interesting world records. The oldest hotel in the world: Hoshi, Komatsu, Ishikawa, opened in 718 The largest tomb in the world: Nintokuryo Tomb, Sakai, Osaka, 46ha. The tallest statue in the world: Ushiku Daibutsu, Ushiku, Ibaraki, 120m. Theme park with the most visitors in the world: Tokyo Disneyland, Urayasu, Chiba.

I can tell the 50 states of the U.S.A (actually when I drink with my friends, it can be a good game to tell the names of the states). I tend to forget Rhode Island, Delaware and Vermont.

matatabi

This cat really loves the smell of curry rice. He has to melt down to smell it. So cute. I know cats are weak for 'matatabi'. (Actinidia), but I have never seen such a cat that's weak for curry rice.

Zenkoji is a well known temple in Nagano pref. Today, they pulled out of plans to host a ceremony for the Olympic torch relay because of concerns over Tibet. I support their decision; I hope their official web site won't get any cyber attacks.

Shift has a nice street fashion collection: '1000 girls' page. I think Japanese girls are much more fashionable than before. What do you think?

IDEE is one of my favorite interior shops. They opened a new shop in Jiyugaoka in June. I checked their online shop today, IDEE is a rare shop where we can buy productss by Swedish designer Lisa Larson and UK's artist Donna Wilosn's cute stufedf animals. This one can be dark joke 'lung ashtray', you can think of it as an ironic dirty lung and also it's a word play in Japanese. Ash tray is HAI (灰 ash) ZARA(皿 tray) in Japanese. Lung is also HAI (肺) and they have the same pronunciation. The name of the tray is HAI ZARA(肺皿).

busy day.

I am sorry for the short post. I am still busy job hunting, so no time to write a long post :-(.

These two are the most impressive articles for me today. One is the Real life Garfield. And this video of a guy who was trapped in an elevator for 41 hours.

Golgo 13 t-shirt will be released from UNIQLO in June. I want it!!! The old guy model is the writer of Golgo13. Nice!!

Boooooooooooooooooo. When some good manga is to be made into a film, I always say that I hope it will be made in Hollywood. Actually I hoped that Death Note and 20th Century Boy would be made in Hollywood rather than in Japan, because I was really disappointed by Japanese movies in the past like Casshaern or Devil man. BUT at any rate, even in Hollywood, I didn't want anybody to touch Ghost in the Shell. However, Steven Spielberg got the right to make it film. Did you know that? And talking about movies, Tetris was made into movie? Is this teaser true?

denny's in Japan

cute!! Gizmo Boxing Cat

Ha ha ha, this is funny: "Sexy toilet has naked models!" A beautiful mannequin will watch as you are doing that.

I picked thes flying Penguins for April fool of BBC. Here is the making of that video.

This is a nice collection "Matsuri", you can see the costumes of local festivals in Japan. Click next in the lower right.

Do you know Denny's in Japan are run by 7-Eleven. Of course Denny's in Japan has a compeletely different menu and prices from the U.S.  Today I read this news "UPDATE 3-Profit drops at Japan's Seven & I, sees recovery", aa lot of Denny's will be closed. I don't know about Denny's in the U.S. But I agree. Yes, I guess, they can't match consumer choice now. The price is high, the selection on the menu is not so great. And some places are really getting old, etc. I won't choose Denny's basically.

Good by cui daore

Two familiar things will disappear soon. orange train car of Chuo line. All train cars will be changed to a new type silver color with orange lines. I wrote about the reason why Chuo line had so many suicide accidents before. For me, that dark orange color always looked gloomy.

Another one is Cui Daore doll and the restaurant at Dotonbori in Osaka. The restaurant got to be old and, so they will close in July. The doll "Taro" was the symbol of the restaurant, so he will retire also. Osaka people will miss him, he was the symbol of colorful Dotonbori too. too.

Meet me is a Japanese 3d virtual community, and it will open soon. I have never used Second Life and I don't have an interest to do that, so I won't use Meet me, but it will be fun to look around 3D Tokyo one time. They said they made it from car navigation system data. So Tokyo would be very real. The funny part is that they said you can get some passive service "Meet me". It will mean Japanese people are not good at acting positive just like talking, asking, trying something in such a virtual community. When you go to Second Life and someone runs away from you when you say hello, it will be a Japanese person?!