watashi to tokyo

Japanese 'female' robot walks, shows emotions

Did you read about this robot news? "Japanese 'female' robot walks, shows emotions" Since they have the technology to make her, I wanted them to make a Motoko Kusanagi.

Whoops! Dangerous Japanese "Detergent Suicide" Technique Creeps Into U.S. Yes, we had such chemical suicide cases a lot last year. People mix toilet cleaner with laundry detergent to create a poisonous gas.

I found a strange recruit page for the Saga prefectural government. Look at this, they say they want someone who is passionate and devoted to Saga prefecture. Hmm, it's funny but too stifling. :-p By the way, I wrote about Saga just once before when I picked a song about how Saga is such a super rural place.

Wasabi Plant

I watched the Japanese TV drama "The Quiz Show" this weekend. It is a low cost, late night program, but it was good to kill my time. There are some episodes with English subtitles in that site. If you have time, check it out.

In the Kyushu area, Cherry blossoms have started to bloom. Maybe in Tokyo, people will have Ohanami next weekend. Here are crazy Ohanami costume items....orz

Japanese cosmetic company Kanebo had an old compact collection and they showed their collection in this site. Old compacts are beautiful and have a good mood.

Telegraph UK picked "Top 10 'inventions' that changed the world". They picked Sony walkman and Sony Play Station, but I think Nintendo Family computer had much more impact  than Play Station. Why did they choose two Sony products instead of picking Nintendo? Hmm, suspicious.

Have you ever seen a wasabi plant? I mean real wasabi, not the tube type. In expensive Soba places they serve small wasabi plants and we grate them before we eat. Wasabi's acridity is changed by way of grating, nifty portal Z had such a topic today. She got a wasabi plant and cut, chopped and grated by shark skin and regular grater, and compared to regular tube type wasabi. She said cut and chopped wasabi is really fresh and it's not too acrid, very nice. And it differs from tuna's part too, fatty tuna (we say Toro) reduces the acridity. She realized tube wasabi is the most acrid and it doesn't have any freshness.

Strange coffee MAX

MAX Coffee is a brand of canned coffee; this is their strange TV ad. This coffee MAX sponsored toilet at a ski resort area is also funny. Hmm, that looks scary!

Though the link is already dead, I once wrote about a Japanese castle that was sold. Then I found another Japanese castle for sale on Yahoo Japan’s auction site. But it is not a real castle, it's a "love hotel" that has a Japanese castle design. The price was $1.3?million. The auction is over and nobody bid on it.

The t-shirt design store Graniph started its "Japanese Designers Project." 24 Japanese designers designed T-shirts. Kentaro Nagai, who I wrote about in this post, joined this project. I will buy this shirt: "Octopus Attacks on Tokyo." Isn't it cool? They always sell nice and funny T-shirts, I want this, this and this. They offer overseas order. Check it out.

Gundam, Robot love

SUGOI! (great!) This cool office is made entirely from cardboard. It’s cute how they draw illustrations in some places.

Brian sent me this article: "A ringtone that can give women bigger breasts?" I don't think so.

As a robot enthusiast, this is of great interest to me! "Robot Programmed to Love Goes too Far." Hmm… cute. I want to see a video of the robot using “his bulky mechanical body to block her exit and hug her repeatedly.” This is an interesting robot topic too: "Robot teacher that can take the register and get angry." Here are the details of Saya.
Gundam is having its 30th anniversary, and we will have a lot of Gundam events this year. Yesterday, all Gundam fans were excited by this news: in July, a Gundam of 18 meters will appear in Odaiba. This is a rendering. I am not a big Gundam fan, but it looks very cool so I wanna see it.

Next weekend, the Tokyo marathon will be held in Tokyo. Some of my co-workers and friends will participate. I don't have any interest in running such a long distance (I would love to just walk it). I like Tokyo Metro's Spencer site. The graphics were created by the art group "Groovisions". I like their work very much, check out the site.

Colonel's curse

I am thinking of buying a new bicycle. We have never had a bike stolen and we don't need to worry about it except in the most unusual circumstances like a super expensive or rare bike. If I buy a new BMW bike, I will use this "Anti-Theft bike".

Ha ha ha! I like this idea "Ear Switch" (web translated), the way you move your ear will control an iPod. The product has a lot of possibilities, very nice, but this face is funny :-).

This news was funny too. In Japan, KFC displays a Colonel Sanders doll at the shop entrance, his costume is changed to Santa at Christmas, maid in Akiba, kimono during summer festival, etc. 24 years ago, the Hanshin Tigers won the League championship finally, cheerful Osaka people were so happy and went crazy, sang the team song, drank, some jumped into the super dirty Yodo river, etc., etc. Then someone threw the Colonel into the Yodo river. After that, for over 18 years the Tigers couldn't win the League championship, so Osaka people called it the Colonel's curse. Yesterday finally police found his body. The color changed into a Greek statue, but his smile has never changed.

This is the painting of Nara in Union Square Station

eek told me the link "Nara Arrested For Graffiti Before Boesky Opening" of blog Arrested Motion.  There is the photo of Nara's painting in Union Square Station.

Yoshitomo Nara was arrested in NY

Interesting news from the US: "Nara Arrested for Graffiti Before Boesky Opening." Yoshitomo Nara painted in Union Square Station and was arrested, I am not sure if his painting is still there. If you live in NY, could you check it out and take a photo? Since he is a popular artist, people would love to see it! This is his blog, but he stopped posting in early Feb.

These are ads for the Sony Alpha 900, though I don't know for which country. It's cool; I like that it has a bit of a cheesy mood. This is the ad for the Sony Alpha series in Japan. He is a handsome guy, but it’s nothing fun. Like I wrote before, we had a more aggressive, sharp, cool image of Sony and we could see it in ads too. But like Bravia, the good Sony ads are all foreign; I can't see any cool ads in Japan. :-(

Agenzia Radica is Italian media company (newspaper? magazine? TV?). They picked the topic of Japanese Hikikomori and reported that they also have hikikomori young people in their society in this article (web translated). In Japan, people drop out of the system, but in Italy people drop out of relationships… very interesting. I wrote about it 5 years ago and I guess that the situation in Japan has not changed. This bad economy may produce more hikikomori people actually. Anyway, I realized that the translation points between Italian and English is very good; there is nothing unclear to me. I envy them, but today, I found a good point of Japanese translation: when you type in "dora que" in Japanese, it translates to “Dragon Quest correctly.” :-P

guys start to cook lunch

Oh, I like this project: "ogoru TV." Ogoru means “treat,” and “project treat” applicants get to say what they want to eat. The first one is a female college student who wants to eat 10,000 yen of lobster and abalone curry at Ginza Shiseido Parlor. There are no limitations except that you can enjoy conversation during eating. If you can speak in Japanese, please try and eat something super expensive! Me? I don't need it, I would love to just eat Mapo tofu at home by myself :-).

This is the Uniqlo parka map. Click on the map and you can see 1000 people wear Uniqlo parkas in each town. We can see each town’s character from the people and their fashions. There are many foreign?people in Roppongi, people are artistic in Shimokitazawa, and of course in Akihabara, they look geeky. Enjoy it.

Though Hetaria wasn't aired on TV, I guess we have "personification" boom. Bandai has started releasing a manga on the Internet with the title of "Miracle Train." There are five boys in the manga and each boy is a personification of one of the five stations of the Chuo line. It goes Tokyo, Shinjuku, Nakano, Kichijoji, Tachikawa from the left.

I wrote that we have an “Herbivore Boy” boom in this post. In a poll of "who is the most herbivore boy?" people voted Tsuyoshi Kusanagi of SMAP as the number one pick. He had no scandals and he always played a kind, nice, warmhearted guy in dramas and movies, so I understand why people have such an image of him. By the way, the increase of herbivore boys is starting to take affect in the kitchen. For example, guys are learning cooking at cooking schools, and cooking tools are selling well (guys like tools even though they won’t change the end result of cooking) and bigger lunch boxes for guys have sold well too. According to store stafsf, even single guys are now starting to make lunch boxes in order to save money and control their health. By the way, they also polled for “carnivore women” and the number one pick is Aya Sugimoto. She was an actress that protested fur in a PETA poster last year.

Cat hair felt!

"Japan Food and Sake festival" has just started in LA. Not only typical Japanese food, you may try local special there because some prefectures has booth. If you live near there, check it out! It will be fun to visit.

This is introduce how to make felt from cat hair. Those cat puppet are made from real cat hair! You can make it from dog hair too.　Ohhh cute!!. In this page, there is how to make it.

How to make puppet
1. collect the falling hair of the cat.
2. make the paper pattern of the puppet.
3. wrap a the paper pattern with a wrap and tape.
4. wrap it with the falling hair of the cat.
5. pour liquid soup and rub the surface.
6. rinse it and drain the water.
7. iron and compress it and dry it.
8. take off the paper pattern from puppet.
9. cut fluff and add tale, eyes etc,.

Game D

Do you know video game "D" or "Enemy Zero"? A creator of those game is Kenji Eno and we didn't have hear about him long time but finally he may relase new game. In his blog, he wrote "Get back" and it links to Google Map "Moscone center in San francisco" and in another post, he said "Get back to where I once belonged." and link to search regulst of Google "March 25 2009". He will make some release on March 25 in San Fransico, we will see.