watashi to tokyo

Sendai Kamotsu

I read this music video it popular for foreign people. Actually most comments are in Englsih. They are a band "sendai kamotsu"( means Sendai(city name of north area) cargo) they sing comical song in Sendai dialect. This song is about friendship but like some comments said they sing about anus in real, it's a kind of words game.

And Sendai Kamotsu's true identity is visual band Nightmare. 

Modern Samurai and my recommendation restaurants in Tokyo

"Modern Samurai" Iso Machii cut through a pellet fired from a gun at 70 mph using only his samurai sword. Look at this video, it's great! He’s like Goemon Ishikawa.

Last weekend, I read the news that Food & Wine magazine picked Tokyo as its top city for cutting edge cuisine. I am happy that I am living in the best gourmet city in the world. If you want to try a luxury restaurant, please check out Michelin Tokyo 2009. I will pick some of my suggestions for Japanese restaurants. This site helps me a lot.

Sushi: "Bikkuri zushi." Bikkuri zushi is a chain sushi restaurant and they have two types of places. Kaiten zushi type and counter type. I recommend the counter type place.

Kaiten sushi (Conveyor Belt Sushi): I like this place most: "Meguro Sushi Katsu."

Okonomiyaki: You can eat real Hiroshima Okonomiyaki at Carp in Kanda. Try “zenbu iri" (all in one).

Tonkatsu: The very popular "Tonkatsu Maisen" is in Harajuku. I recommend Kimukatsu too, they have mille feuille katsu.

Motsu nabe: If you ask me what the best motsunabe place is, I will pick Motsunabe Arizuki in Ebisu.

Okinawan food: Churari. Here is the review for the Harajuku shop, but I like to go to the Ebisu one.

Tempura: It's a chain restaurant, but I think that Tsuna hachi is good place to eat real tempura.

Shabu Shabu: Shabu Shabu is usually expensive so it’s hard to get full, so maybe this isn’t the best choice, but at least you can eat as much as you want so I will pick this place: mo-mo-paradise

Ramen: Since Ippudo is so popular in NY, if you are not a New Yorker, try Ippudo in Japan.

place you will go in Japan

Ryuichi Sakamoto has started a Twitter in English.

This is funny: New Russian Girls Photo Trend. I saw this pose in commercial photos or something.

Top Traveler is a travel guide site and Top Traveler JP released a ranking of the top places in Japan that foreign people search for information on. It's interesting because some places are not popular at all with native Japanese people.
No.1 Tsukiji: I am not sure it’d be fun to go there. It's a big market, but you can't buy anything because it is meant for wholesalers. The good thing is that the area around the market is cheap and they serve fresh fish.
No.2 Tokyo Disney Land: Asian people would like to go there, but not Americans.
No.3 Pokémon Center: Wow... I have never been there and I didn't know about the place. If you have kids, maybe it would be good. But if you just want to go buy some Pokémon items, you don't need to go there, you can buy them everywhere.
No.4 Roppongi Hills: My company left that area and I am very happy about it. That place is strange and nothing there is fun. Shops are expensive, restaurants are expensive… maybe the sky tower is the only good part about it.
No.5 Tokyo Disney Sea: I read that they will open a new attraction in May.
No.6 Asakusa: This place is good, you can try many food stalls (yatai) too.
No.7 Kinkakuji: Yes if you go to Kyoto, please check it out.
No.8 Fushimi Inari: Yes, if you go to Kyoto, it's an exotic place.
No.9 SPA world: I don't know this place. It's in Osaka.
No.10 Universal Studio Japan: Asian people go there? I couldn't enjoy the US one.
No.11 Tokyo Oedo Onsen: Hmm I heard that it's a very cheesy place and it’s crowded on weekends. It’s fine if you don't mind that, but you have to get naked. Try it.
No.12 Kiyomizu temple: historical place in kyoto, it's good to visit.
No.13 Spa Rakua: 
No.14 Osaka castle: Hmm it's a symbol of the ex-capital of Japan. It’s a reconstruction, not the original structure.
No.15 Meiji Shrine: It is not so special a place, but I heard that it’s a power spot in Tokyo.
No.16 Takaragawa Onsen: Wow, I don't know why this is famous with foreign people. But you can feel the mood of "Spirited Away." This place is a famous ryokan. Yes! It's good to visit.
No.17 Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan: I don't know this place.
No.18 Shitenno Temple: It's in Osaka and the oldest temple in Japan.
No.19 Hokkaido Shrine: I have never been there. Hokkaido is so far away!
No.20 Shinjuku Gyoen: If you go there, I would recommend going in early April. You can see the cherry blossoms. Unfortunately, this year, most of the flowers have already fallen.

I sometimes wrote about urban legends like in this post and this post. Someone asked me about another legend called the "Red Room." It was an old urban legend on the internet. When you use the Internet, a red pop-up ad window opens. In the window, there are a sentence: "Do you like it?" You try to close the window, but it pops up again and again. Then you realize that the sentence is splitting out little by little and the pop-up window starts to open and close automatically. Then, finally you see "Do you like red room" in the window. Suddenly, the monitor screen changes into a red color and a lot of names appear on it. You can sense that something is behind on you. You die and your room turns red with your blood. Here is a movie about "Red Room." Yes, the story is nothing interesting and it’s not scary at all. But imagine when you are using the Internet at midnight, suddenly a red pop-up window opens with the words "Do you like it?" We had a lot of such mischief and it made us scared.

Great Lego work

The place of Windows XP wallpaper has changed sadly. Wow...

20 unusual and creative packaging designs, one of them is this Naoki Fukasawa's design. "Takara Banana Ore". Talking about strange packages, you can see unique packages on EKIBEN.

I laughed to read this post. (BAD web translation). It's about Google. Google search is much better than Yahoo. :-p Their search reacts to people's search words quickly and accurately. But sometimes their suggestions make you laugh, right? Go to Google and type "oh," hmm, why is "oh the places you'll go" so hot? With "are", "are you smarter than a 5th grader" is hot. Is it a test or something? It's funny but the great part of Google seems to exclude sexual and bad words. However in Google Japan, their suggestions embarrass us often because they don't exclude anything by system. So suggestions that are bad, sexual, or strange sometimes mean less for regular people, because they are too much otaku keywords. Here and here are collections of such words. I laughed to see when you search "su," Google suggests "su, sugoi chocobo! "( it,it's great chocobo!!")

This post has 48 of the Coolest, Stylish and Creative Lego Creations . They are all great! This one would be a doll of "Innocence". A few days ago, I found this LEGO DS and was very impressed. And in Japan, a guy spent 6 years to complete "Battle Ship Yamato" and he uploaded a movie of it on YouTube today. You can see the detail there. Wow...great.

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He is a young guy and he is well known at 2ch as a LEGO god. You can see them on his web site. Oh! this is Spoo, it was an old meme that took root in a TV show for very young children. Most Spoo movies have been deleted from YouTube, so now we can only see the real Spoo in photos.

Augmented Reality

Do you know AR（Augmented Reality）? Wiki said "Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data". Here is a good sample, a new year card of some company. If you want to try it, you need to print out card first. 　It's interesting.

Here is a post about Mini had produced AR ad. Here is the making movie.

I found AR on Japanese web site, if you want to try, push third bordeaux button from the left. Print out PDF file and take the print to your web camera. You can see 3D bottle on your hand in the camera.

Translate server error

This was a translation error made by the restaurant, but rather an error message from a web translation site. But....translate server error.

Because of that photo, I decided to check Engrish.com, which I haven’t looked at in a long time. Wow, they renewed the site as a blog! And it's easy to search archives now. Look at the "most popular" entries, they’re funny. I like this one: "take the child and fall into water carefully." I like to see menus. I like this one: "chocolate puke." But I can't imagine what they were trying to translate… pie? parfait? This is a Japanese menu… orz.

Have you ever seen Production IG’s "Blood: The Last Vampire"? I have not, because it looks gory and I can't watch it. The manga was made into a live-action film "Last Blood" with a Chinese director and Korean actress Joen Ji Hyun. Here is the trailer. I read that Oshii Mamoru wanted to make a film with her after watching this movie.

open stomach

This was very interesting: "Disney Double Take." Good job! Not Disney, I mean the person who made this video. And I will add this link to.o :-)

Scientists Make Blackest Material Ever. The blackest stuff in the world is in Japan. By the way, in English you call an evil person “black-hearted,” right? In Japanese, we say that a person has a “black-stomach” (hara guroi). We have more stomach-sayings like “Hara ga suwaru” (stomach sit down), which means "settle down, calm your nerves." “Hara wo saguru” (seek the stomach) means to "guess or feel out another's thinking." “Hara wo waru” (open stomach) means "get out and be true to oneself." “Hara wo kimeru” (decide one’s stomach) ?means to "be decisive, be determinate." I have no idea why Japanese people ascribe thinking and matters of the heart to the stomach. It would be interesting to study why that is.

Yahoo JAPAN's April Fools trick was “Live-Action Evangelion." I didn't like the trick, though on the Internet, results for "who would be the best cast" was hot. Even if you don’t know these Japanese actors or actresses, I think you can enjoy this. They look like their character:
Gendo : Hiroshi Abe
Ritsuko : Yasuko Matsuyuki
Misaki : Nanako Matsushima
Shinji : Ryunosuke Kamiki
Ayanami : Maki Horikita
Aska : Erika Toda
What do you think?

Japanese is insane

Michael sent me this nice HONDA ad. See? Foreign ads are much better than Japanese ones. Anyways, thank you Michael!

I like this post "Top 5 reason why Japan is certifiably insane" of MANCOUCH.

1) Japanese Game Shows: Some said that they like Takeshi’s Castle. It was an old TV show with Takeshi Kitano. You can watch it on YouTube. I like this "can't laugh” series:

2) The Poop Obsession: Yes, I check Yahoo Shopping and there are over 2,000 poop items. The craziest ones are this hairpin and this funny pointing tool.

3) Tentacle Rape Monsters: I hate this. Yes, we are crazy.

 4) Robots: I am a robot lover! So what? Ah! I found another great news item about ASIMO! ASIMO will move by your IMAGINING! Not moving!!! (web translation). If I found this news on April Fools’ Day, I would’ve thought it was just a joke. But this is true!

5) American Stars in Japanese Commercials: I wrote about this a long time ago, I guess some links still work.
I enjoyed reading the comments. I like this one: "the japanese dont need a reason for being insane. they're the japanese!" Yes, we are!

April fool

Every site had an April Fools’ topic today. It was fun to watch before, but recently there haven’t been any good pranks.
The hottest topic was Tsuburaya’s (Ultra Man) site. Today, it became Kanegon's blog (cute money eating monster).
This was picked up by many blogs too: the official site of Cyborg 009. Today, 009 changed into Tensai Bakabon's Papa, which is a very popular gag manga/anime. His manga collaborated with COMME des GARCONS and the shoes sold in a French online shop. (I want it!)
And also this: travel agency Travel.JP sells flexible class airline ticket. The seat is a foldable chair and you have to hold the table yourself.
Yahoo JAPAN had this article: "Neon Genesis Evangelion" will be made into a live-action film.....orz Hmm… this type of stuff is really boring.
Google Japan’s prank was better, when you search some words on Google Japan, Google makes a senryu with the words. It is called CADIE technology. :-) This is much more thoughtful, right?
April fools’ pranks should either have a tinge of truth or make me grin like a tiny fool. This one impressed me very much: "2ch has started to use the domain ".orz" And I almost got tricked by this one: the company MemoLi developed the photo retouching tool "occhocochoi" (hasty), which lets you remove your finger from photos.