watashi to tokyo

Sugu Yaru Ka

What the hell is this? Hello Kitty castle in Shanghai, China. I would go crazy if I stayed there for even one night because I’d get too stressed.

I found this: "14 Bizarre Japanese toys." Hmm… I will add this to the list: "biri biri Kaze hiki wanko" (a flu-ridden puppy that gives electric shocks) and pop-up Pocky that works like a pop-up pirate. We have lots of snack toys and food toys: Curl puzzle, Meiji choco puzzle, Apollo choco puzzle, sushi puzzle, etc. Cute, aren’t they? By the way, this Switched post is interesting too: "10 Video Games That Should Be Made Into Movies." Check it out.

The Japanese have a phrase "oyakusho shigoto" and the dictionary says that in English it means “bureaucracy” or “red tape,” does that make sense to you? Maybe it means that common public offices take a long time to work on something and need a lot of paperwork. So some city and ward offices have adopted a policy of "Sugu yaru ka," which means a "do it quickly” group whose policy is to respond and react quickly to help people's needs. Here is the official page of Setagaya ward’s “sugu yaru ka" (web translation), where you can see them working on cases brought to their attention:
#1 There is a big hive on the road and it's dangerous to walk around there.
#2 I want you to help a sparrow stuck in a manhole cover

The funny part is that they say "This is not a section that can do everything." Yes, I understand that there are people who make impudent demands; I guess the office will need to refuse a lot of nervy selfish requests.

Real size Tetsujin 28-go!

It’s been a pretty busy week this week, but this site healed me during lunchtime: "there, fixed it.com"

The life-size Gundam is a pretty hot topic, but it is in Odaiba in Tokyo (in eastern Japan), so I guess that the Osaka area (in western Japan) started to plan this because of their East-West rivalry: the Kobe Tetsujin 28go project. They are building a life-size Tetsujin 28go and it will have the same height as Tokyo’s Gundam. Tetsujin 28go is a manga written and illustrated by Mitsuteru Yokoyama who was born in Kobe. And I found a video of them building the structure today. It looks pretty good and I want to see it too.

robot show his emotion

Honda's Hovering Concept Car! Hmm… the future we dreamed of will become real, hopefully before I die :-).

This is a very weird topic: "who? why? sumo wrestler seals." I didn't know this, but as of last year, weird sumo wrestler face seals appeared on mailboxes, shop panels, trash boxes, etc. in popular downtown areas like Shibuya and Ginza. Since the seal has no words, it doesn't look a shop ad. On the internet, people are guessing who put them up and why they are doing it. Now I remember this crash barrier thorn incident. I don't well remember how this issue was resolved. I think we discovered that it was natural phenomenon caused by small car accidents...

I wrote about this before: 24 years ago, the Colonel Sanders statue was thrown into the dirty river in Osaka by crazy Hanshin Tigers fans. He looked really miserable when he was finally found. But recently, he was fixed up and restored to the Osaka KFC. We will see him soon, but before that, his keychain was released as the "Lucky Colonel."

Horror house

This is a brand of vodka named “Samurai”! The bottle has a good design.

Copenhagen, probably the best city in the world. Researchers at UK lifestyle magazine Monocle judged the cities by their compact planning, transportation system and infrastructure, medical system, restaurants, entertainment, etc. No.1 is Copenhagen, 2 is Munich and 3 is Tokyo! Thank you! But apparently the article didn’t consider population crowding, bad weather (too cold or too hot), stress, and small living spaces. As for the US, only Minneapolis made the list.

In Japan, summer is horror season. Horror movies will be released soon. By the way, the scariest haunted house would be this Senritsu 4 in Fujikyu highland amusement park. You have to walk through the ruins of an old hospital and takes 50 minutes! Hmm that would be impossible for me.

gaijin 4 frame catoon generator

This robot is hot in Japan. This is not a stop-motion movie. The robot is controlled by a microcomputer that handles its complicated movements. Cute and great, right?

I admit it was a mistake to go to see Transformers Revenge… Anyways, this site said that the 'Akira' project is dead. Leonardo DiCaprio gave up on it? I was looking forward to seeing Kaneda’s bike.

Do you know these people? They are very well known foreigners on the internet in Japan, but nobody knows their names. We have a well known joke tool: "gaijin 4 koma generator" (foreigner 4 frame generator). Basically, we use it to make 4-frame cartoons like this. Since it is a very popular generator, we have stock images like this absence of leader, crying, mask, being drawn up to heaven. Some made a rounding up site, some made ascii art. If those guys knew they were so famous in Japan, they would be shocked.

crazy Japanese train

This video shows Japanese train craziness, those people are not police offiers, but train station staff. I use the Odakyu line to go to work. It's crowded, but not like this. This must be the worst train line in Japan.

This Wired post is interesting: "Q&A: Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto on Mario, Zelda, Project Natal and More." By the way, Dragon Quest IX Hoshizora no Mamoribito will finally be released in July. In Japan, TV ads starring SMAP were already made. 

This is an interesting article too: Culture May Be Encoded in DNA

herbivore Boy

Good job! post-it stop motion. making movie is fun too.

Nintendo made a mysterious page on their official site. Here it is. People assume it will be the return of Tingle from the legend of Zelda and Nintendo will release a new game of him. We had Freshly-picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland before, so it may happen. But I am not sure it will be released in North America, because they didn't sell Rosy Rupeeland there. Do you know why? People in North American had a cool image for Zelda and they don't think Tingle fits Zelda, so people don't like Tingle as in Japan or other countries in Europe.

I picked an article about how the herbivore boy is trend in Japan. Today I found CNN had an article "Japan's 'herbivore men' -- less interested in sex, money". It's an interesting article, check it out.

This one is funny, Excel-style 2ch viewer, we can read 2ch at work with this program.

It is fun to read people's reaction to the real size Gundam. I remember PinkTentacle had a good post about building a real size Gundam before. And I remember this one too, Gundam in Japanese painting. Check other Tenmyoya Hisashi's art works here.
By the way, thank you for many comment to this post "why highly-educated girls want to be house wife". Like I wrote in the comments, I feel I can get my freedom from independence economically, mentally, etc. I want to do, go, choose, live on my own will. It might be hard if I keep house. That's the biggest reason why I want to work.

fish fell from the sky, this time.

Japanese people drink vinegar for their health, and in some JR train stations there are black vinegar bars where you can drink a small glass of vinegar. Now we have milk bars too, you can choose among different brands of milk or flavored milk like coffee milk, strawberry milk or maybe "fruit milk." I am not sure what fruit milk is because we hardly ever see it in stores. It tastes like orange + banana with milk.

A few strange news items from Japan: I wrote before that tadpoles fell from the sky and today, fish fell from the sky in the Ishikawa area. What is going on there? We don't know.

TV Asahi did a feature about the ordinary third son of Kim Jong Il on their new show. I guess TV Asahi paid a lot for the photo. As for Korean media, he is an architect from South Korea.

A guy's PC was stolen and he called the police. Tthe police caught the criminal but the criminal told the police he found hemp in the room where he stole the PC. So the guy was arrested in the end. How stupid.
UNIQLO launched new promotional content on their webpage: "UNIQLO calender." It's a time lapse movie, you can see various areas of Japan, but everything looks like a diorama. Very cute.

why highly-educated girls want to be house wife

Finally the real size Gundam appeared in Odaiba. It is18m tall, here are making-of movies.
This is an artwork in Canada, it's a project by Kurt Perschke, who is traveling around the globe with this ball. Hmm, it reminds me of the ugliest building in Tokyo. Look t this, it's almost the same.

In Tachikawa, a canned food bar opened. At the bar, you can eat over 100 kinds of canned food, some that are very familiar, and some that are very rare. In Japan, the most popular canned food is tuna salad named chicken of the sea. Next would be hagoromo salmon, then cooked sardines with soy sauce or miso. As for rare canned foods, we have cooked salmon hearts, sea lion meat curry, bear meat curry, and canned ramen. By the way, my favorite is cooked salmon with bones, because the bones get very soft and a little bit crispy, I like that part.

I was pretty shocked to read this article: "Why highly-educated girls want to be housewives" (web translated). Highly-educated girls in their 20s want to quit their jobs and become housewives. They don't care about their academic background or careers, even if they graduated from the most prestigious schools in Japan, like Tokyo University. According to government research, to the question "Do you think that husbands should work, and wives should keep the house?" the highest number of yeses came from people in their 60’s, but next highest response was girls in their 20’s! One girl broke up with her Tokyo University boyfriend because he had hoped she would keep her career after marriage. For ladies in their late 30’s and 40’s, a career meant status, because for their generation being a housewife was the easiest thing that anybody could choose. However, for highly-educated girls in their 20’s, being a housewife seems to have some kind of status. With their backgrounds, we can see that they have self-confidence and pride. Usually it is very hard for women to find good job after raising kids in Japanese society, but maybe they think that they can do it without any problems. Most of all, they think that they won't be able to find a guy that they need to work or help. They think they can just live happily with their husband’s money. Hmm… interesting, but I am a little bit worried about our society’s educational system. What did they learn at the highest seat of learning that makes them think this way?

Anyway, my mom was a housewife; she hardly went to work for as long as I remembered. I am not sure if she wanted to go to work or if she liked housekeeping. I won't ask her about it because it'd be sad if I knew that she has regrets about her life, I really hope not. The one thing I can tell is that she is weaker against stress than I am. I won't say that resistance to stress is good or important, but my toughness has helped me out a lot.

Wakeari food is boom now

I was pretty shocked to see this: "Countries that are Least Affected by Recession." Japan is No.7? I feel that Japan is still in pretty bad shape. Though I don’t have any statistical data, I can tell just from looking around me. For example, we have the "SUGOMORI" (nest spending) phenomenon, which means that people aren’t going out and are spending more time at home on weekends. Actually, I have not yet taken a trip this year.
In online shopping, "WAKEARI" foods are very popular. WAKEARI means "there’s some reason" and wakeari foods are foods that are discounted for a particular reason: the dry edges of cheesecake bars or broken chocolate or broken mentaiko. Shops have started to sell parts that they used to throw away because people need them now. Gardening items sold well, as people are starting to plant herbs and vegetables at home. If Japan is really No.7, I guess that the situation in the US must be much worse than I thought. It's always darkest before the dawn. I hope I can see sunshine soon.

Sorry for the short post, I will pick some funny items:
I love this one! The Green Space Travel Case, it would be a nice joke, but even such a small green space would make lunchtime wonderful. I am sure of that!

"School Lunches From Around the World" I like this type of post. In the past I wrote about airline meals and company cafeterias.

Do you want to eat brain bread? 3yen.com picked this funny bread.

A long time ago, I wrote that Japanese manhole designs are good. Today, I found this nice photo collection site and they have colorful Japanese manholes, but the site missed this one! Do you know this? It's an original design of the old YouTube maintenance message. YouTube had that before too. You know "All your base are belong to us".