watashi to tokyo

Real Pacman

This in an interesting music video of performance group "world order". The main guy is Genki Sudoh. He was well known as mixed martial artist for K-1 befor, after retiring it, he became dancer, actor and writer, he wrote about some spiritual books, one of them was "talking to Bashar". Very interesting guy.

This is an article of Psychological Science: "Perception of Emotion Is Culture-Specifi". According to it, Japanese person pay attention to the tone of his voice, not his face. That’s what other Japanese people would do. Hmm when I read this article, I realized I can agree with that. I often judged mom or brother were in bad mood or good mood without seeing his face when I got home, just talk her/his tone of voice on their reply when I said "I come home!".

Ha ha ha this is funny "real packman"!! We have an legend "Pacman Game Case : Tokyo District Court : Judgement". Before pacman, the video game characters were not admitted as copyright issue. But when pacman release, some Japanese cafes set the similar characters games and Nintendo brought it to coat as "the similar those went to against to pacman's cinematic copyright products. Nintendo won and that was the first case the game characters could have copyright in Japan.

Billy's bootcamp will be made into wii game

Billy Blank's Billy's bootcamp was really big in 2007 in Japan. Actually I had DVD and did it for over a year but now boos is gone and I heard he got devorce and live in Japan with his new Japanese wife. But but! his bootcamp will be made into game and release for Nintendo wii in next spring! He joined in his project as voice actor.

English news about Japanese vending machine, new type recommend a juice for your with your profile.

 

I am back from Vietnam

I am back from Vietnam, it was only 5 days holidays but I could experience unusual stuff to me "chaos". I needed two days to used to it and I won't say it's beautiful and nice country to visit but I can say Vietnam has a kind of addictive charm. I will be back to Vietnam soon. I will return to my regular life from today :-)

Did you check this trailer already? I really enjoyed to read people's comments. "MY CHILDHOOD DIED".

"Japanese tobacco taxes marching upwards as gov't aims to discourage smoking". To celebrate this news, quit-smoking TV ads contests is held and here are award winners.

 

Panasonic will release auto shampoo robot for nursing care, washing hair is the burden of nursing care so the machine will make it easier. We have good nursing-care bath but care team has to wash hair by hand. By the way the nursing-care bath idea came from this Sanyo's future bath aka "Human washing machine" idea in Tokyo expo in 1970.

LEVEL-5 Inc is an independent video game developer and publisher based in Fukuoka, Japan. They are well known as developer of Professor Layton and the Curious Village for the Nintendo DS in early 2007, some found their office in their recruiting page and it is very nice!, they have motion capture studio!

Free Food? A recent food business trend in Japan

A recent food business trend in Japan is low price, shops are trying to cut costs by using touch screen remote control menu ordering systems(they use ipad!!) or self service( customers bring foods and drinks from food counter to table by themselves). Those kind of food business are getting popular due to the long recession.

This summer we have another trend: "Free Stuff". Mr. Donut is giving away 16,000 donuts in order to celebrate they’re 40th anniversary this year. They will also bring back 14 types of donuts that they from a long time ago, which they don’t sell anymore, for a limited time.

"Lawson", the second largest convenience store in Japan, is promoting their new Autumn menu item"baked pasta" by giving away 200 "baked pastas" at the R25 cafe everyday until the end of September.

Those two promotions are temporary events, but the food company Ajinomoto's "Dashi Cafe" will serve a free cup of miso soup and a small rice ball anytime. Ajinomoto is famous for inventing MSG (monosodium glutamate), and the company name (Ajinomoto) is actually the word for MSG in Japanese. They also make fish soup and kelp stock, called “dashi”, which is very popular with consumers. We use dashi to make miso soup and many other kinds of Japanese food, so Ajinomoto made the Dashi Cafe to promote the importance and good taste of dashi. I welcome to such trends and hope we have more of these kinds of places and promotions in Tokyo since more and more people are having to pinch pennies (or Yen in this case).

Teinenpi Shojo Heidi

Finally someone added English sub to NISSAN TV AD series "Teinenpi Shojo Heidi" ( fuel-efficiency Girl Heidi) which was created by studio crocodile and characters were designed by Satoshi Fumihara. It's parody of Japanese TV animation "Heidi, Girl of the Alps" and actually ZUIYO which is the creative studio of the original animation co-operated to make this. Satoshi Fumihara's parody characters are really popular in Japan now, Mickey Mouse, Peter Pan etc,. Unfortunately there are only two video have English sub but I like most the Granpa and candy one, if I knew how to add English sub, I could do it but I don't know.

Hold the toilet paper like Origami

I don't know you do it on the toilet, in Japan some people hold toilet paper like this. Especially cleaning person hold the toilet peper as a sign "I cleaned this place".

Usually they way of holding is simply triangle, but this site "toilet origami" has more complecated toilet paper holings. Wow it seems you have to stay toilet for long time to make it. But if you can do it, next person who use the place after you will be amazed.

I think you knew this Steven Jobs's Shuriken story. Please put them into tranks next time. If you come to this contry again.

This is "The Worst Album Covers of 2010" by AOL radio blog. Yeahhhh!! Japanese one get the number 1!

Tensai bakabon

I love today's google, it's Fujio Akatsuka's birthday. I though Google jp only change the logo but the Google.com did the same. Those characters are "Tensai Bakabon". He was completely warm, cheerful and liberal person. Such his personality appears in such gag manga like Bakabon. When he died comedian TV personality Tamori (a.k.a. Kazuyoshi Morita) delivered a eulogy, in the eulogy, he borrowed a phrase that Tensai Bakabon's papa says frequently "Korede ii noda" (it's all good) Tamori said: "Your liberating ideas helped us accept and affirm the way things really are. That is, you taught us, "It's all good." It was very impressive eulogy.

Yesterday was Super Mario's 25th birthday. Nintendo has "Happy Birthday 25th" site and we see ads on TV. Ihad a first Super Mario but I have never clear to the end.

September is Tsukimi seaｓon and Seven Eleven Japan will release some Tsukimi foods in September.　One of them is Tsukimi rice ball, it has chicken tekiyaki burger with egg york sauce, we really like egg york. We eat egg and rice and we eat sukiyaki with dipped in egg york. So the rice ball looks pretty good to me. What do you think?

manga Ikigami

Sorry, I can't help laughing to see this : "NAKED WOMAN LOOKS LIKE HOMER SIMPSON"

This is the great work! All of them are hand carved from one block of WOOD!! Beleive it? Sad part is his site is so poor and old fashion.

Since last weekend, I am reading this manga "IKIGAMI". It's interesting for me. Please tyr only one chapter.

I will try update my blog from tomorrow, I had some trouble about updating. thanks!

I miss ELLEGARDEN

Today we had typhoon, it didn't attack Tokyo directly but still we had some water trouble. This is the photo of Omotesando.

I found this video today, did I picked bofre? "Only in Japan" Series - Orange Ball".

pinktentacle has another great post "Medical woodblock prints from 19th-century Japan". Ha ha ha they are wired and grotesque.

I like this "Dedo message board"! You write some messege by dragging your finger trough the fur. Good idea, isn't it?

Another foreign post, "Astrophysics: Red Rain 'Shower of Alien Life'". I didn't know about the red rain but it's really interesting idea that the original of creation in the earth come from univierse.

Today I was listning to ELLEGARDEN in my lunch time and I noticed there are a lot of English comment to this Japanese band and some didn't know they are Japanese. I really miss the band and hope they play together in the future.

Now vocal Hosomi plays in this band "The Hiatus". The Hiatus stand for "a project of music and art, depicters." Sounds are pretty different from ELLEGARDEN, but I like this too. What do you think?

Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami's novel "Norwegian Wood" was made into a film and it was a submission to the 67th Venice International Film Festival and got a standing ovation. In the story, the main character "Toru Watanabe" has just arrived in Hamburg, Germany. When he heard the Beatles'song "Norwegian Wood," suddenly his old memories of the 1960's came back with nostalgic and some sore feelings. The song is often mentioned in the novel because it was his girl friend Naoko's favorite song of .

In the movie, plays Toru Watanabe and Rinko Kikuchi plays Naoko. Some media speculated that Rinko Kikuchi is dating the director Spike Jonze who is known for "Being John Malkovich", and "Where the Wild Things Are". He is also Sofia Coppola's ex-husband. In Tokyo Rinko and Spike are seen a lot out in public as a couple. One story says they were seen dancing in Akihabara!