watashi to tokyo

tamagoyaki

Wow cute fruit memo pad! Kawaii :-).

A few very interesting a foreign news items: "Little girl who does not age hides secret of everlasting youth" and "26-year-old man with body of a two-year-old."

What is the most popular way of cooking eggs in your country? Scrambled? Sunny-side up? Omelet? In Japan, it is tamagoyaki, which is an egg rolled like this. I guess you must’ve eaten or seen such egg rolls at sushi or soba restaurants. To make egg rolls, you need a square omelet pan. Here is a recipe and below is a video of how to make it. You can change the flavor if you want, I like sweet ones so I add a lot of sugar.

By the way, Nifty Portal Z had a post about cooking a big egg roll that looks like Baumkuchen. Looks yummy! Baumkuchen is very popular in Japan and Nifty Portal Z also had this post: homemade Baumkuchen cooked using bamboo!

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."

girly Gumdam

May Michael Jackson's soul rest in peace.

Wow! Copy "トランスフォーマー！" in Japanese and search for it on Yahoo! JAPAN. :-)

Alice sent this post to me (thank you Alice!), "Meet Ponyo, Hayao Miyazaki's Latest Girl-Friendly Film." I don't like Miyazaki animes because I can sense his Lolita complex. It's scary to me.
I like this project: "365 Budapest." He takes a picture of numbers from 1 to 365. Now we can see 177.

This is a beautiful site about Tsugaru. Tsugaru is the name of a part of Aomori prefecture. Yes, it is beautiful place but I have to say that it has a super “country” image because of this song.
Cute! Cute! Pretty deco Gundam!

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.

Tanuki Ukiyoe

I laughed a lot to read this new "a man arrested Mid Haircut". Hha ha ha.

 I wrote before the Tanuki has a big ball bag. My favorite site Pink Tentacle collects Ukiyoe of Tanuki's big bag by Kuniyoshi (I really like him!), check out Kuniyoshi's goldfish print  and also this nude post  too.

Some paperbacks of literary masterpieces were published with cover designs by manga comic artists and they made good sales. We have more. Look at this: the cover designs of "Jigokuhen" of Ryunosuke Akutagawa and "Daraku ron" of Ango Sakaguchi are drawn by Taito Kubo of Bleach.

 Another follow-up story, game maker Jaleco is trying survive and started their new regeneration project. They are asking for new monster designs to make a new monsters game, the deadline is getting closer and you can see the top three monsters (people vote for their favorite one in the site)...I am not sure Jaleco will really use that monster but if not it'll make ENJO = Flaming (Japanese wiki is fun to read).

Fukui airport is strange?

Hahahah funny, C3KO from Hello wars. By the way, this is the designer of the original kitty......ah...

It's funny but I can't understand it at all. It's in an article of the Independent, "world's funniest airport names revealed". I understand Batman Airport is the weirdest, Mafia Airport is the plain scariest...But why is Fukui the rudest? Fukui means fortune place....ah! Sounds like F4 words? I picked in this post, for Japanese "Scheveningen" sounds funny because it means a nasty guy. Erromango sounds like erotic manga for us.

People do go out on weekend and spend time at home with family, it is called Sugomori (nest phenomenon), I wrote. On the other hand, there are cooking toys or cooking tools like home bakery, ice creamer, takoyaki maker, yakitori maker, moffle maker (waffle with mochi= rice cake). I understand we need to entertain ourselves at home like dining out, but I can't accept this, Shinkansen (bullet train) kaiten sushi system. Mom cooks sushi and rotates it by train at home? No no no no, no thank you.

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.

Yep, factory fetish is contagious.

I picked this post: 12 fantastic photos of factories in Japan. I laughed when I read comments like "Yep, factory fetish is contagious. ^_^;;" Some people said that David Sylvian and Yasayuki Yamaguchi made a short film called "STEEL CATHEDRALS (1985)." Here is part 2! Oh, they are original factory moe?

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

Zaisu

Miniature City from mockmoon on Vimeo.

miniature city 2 - featuring vividblaze - from mockmoon on Vimeo.

I am experiencing the busiest time in my life right now. I hope I can blog more next week! Gomennasai! (I am sorry!)

Do you know zaisu? It's a legless chair like this. Japanese people used chairs regularly after the Meiji period and we’re still used to sitting on the floor with zabuton, zaisu, legless sofa or big cushions. I feel that since Japanese houses/rooms are smaller than ones in North America, such legless furniture make our rooms look wider. You know that your perspective is lower than when you’re sitting in a chair with legs. By the way, I wanted to write about this bear zaisu. He is a well known character like Hello Kitty that is called Rela-KUMA (relax + kuma=bear). He’s a very lazy character with a relaxed mood. Ha ha… relaxation, that is just what I need right now.

Can I ask you a question? When I search for images with keyword "241543903," why do I get images of people sticking their heads in a fridge? Is there some rule about fridges and their sizes or something?

I picked Thomason topic before, I also found this new Tomason topic.