Flooded metro helps sizzling Tokyo cool off >
… TOKYO slogs its way through another sweltering summer, the city is desperate to cool its streets. Now the capital has turned to the neglected custom of uchimizu – sprinkling water on the ground to lower air temperature – but with a high-tech twist.
This latest attempt to bring down summer temperatures that have been hovering in the 40s Celsius involves pumping up the water that seeps into the metro system and spraying it from the kerbside onto the road surface. A water-retentive coating stops the water from draining away, and evaporation does the rest.
At the test site, directly outside Japan’s parliament building in central Tokyo, a solar and wind-powered pump forces the subway flood water into high-pressure sprinklers that spray it over a 350-metre stretch of road. Recently, the researchers managed to cool the road surface – which often reaches up to 60C during the summer – by 10C, and the air above the road by 1C… Outpacing global warming by a factor of four, average temperatures in Tokyo alone have risen 3 °C in the past 100 years.….more....
Yukio Hatoyama wooed the Japanese electorate with an agenda for change, but the 62 year-old nicknamed the Alien is an unlikely revolutionary 12:20AM BST 31 Aug 2009 – Telegraph
World’s largest origami dinosaur (25/08/09 — Reuters video 02:24 min.)
Volunteers fold paper to create a replica of a Spinosaur at Tokyo’s Dinosaur Expo 2009.
Absurd quote from Fox: Ancient Japanese ‘Naked Sushi’ Tradition Catches On
…The ritual known in Japanese as “Nyotaimori” (which means “female body presentation”) originated in Japan hundreds of years ago as part of the geisha scene, historians say…more…
Naked sushi is sort of a joke—it’s neither a myth nor anything to do with geisha—but it’s so rare in Japan I always suggest to try it in LA or London where it is so much easier to find than Japan.
Now, Giant Torayan has a roboboner for the Osaka City Hall because according to the Washington Post it, “stimulates people to reconsider a waterfront life style in Japan’s second biggest city.”
Not-news-at-all but..
If you are so inclined you can check out this 5-part BBC series on the Way of Geisha, which is both well done and ridiculously irrelevant.*
*The Willow World of geisha is infinitely less relevant to an average Japanese than opera is to the average Western college student.
However, the fundoshi girl below is not exactly the sexy effect that she was looking for…
She looks like she has a half-full load developing in her adult diaper.
Here’s a wierd promotional video by the group Tamashii and Shibasaki Kou performing “Omae Low Tension Girl” (you are low-tension/laidback girl), which is the theme for the 2007 movie “Maiko Haaaan!!!”
The film “Maiko Haaaan” (IMDB) concerns the maiko (apprentice geisha) obsession of a Geisha otaku/nerd—It was amusing even without subtitles.
Visit the official MaikoHaaaan.com website (Flash-infested, only in Japanese). Fun!
Sankei/Petty Images–TOKUSHIMA, JAPAN – AUGUST 12: Performers dance during the Awa Dance Festival on August 12, 2009 in Tokushima, Japan. The four day festival is expected to attract 1.4 million people.
The Awa Odori (Dance Festival) is held from 12 to 15 August as part of the Obon festival in Tokushima Prefecture on Shikoku in Japan. It is just damn surreal–the dancers number in ten of thousands chanting dunk… Odoru ahou ni –The dancers are fools Miru ahou –The watchers are fools Onaji ahou nara –Both are fools alike so Odorana son, son –Why not dance?
The dancers also chant call and response patterns such as “Yattosa, yattosa“, “Hayaccha yaccha” and “Erai yaccha, erai yaccha“, “Yoi, yoi, yoi, yoi“—these calls have no real meaning.
After looking around, I found out that Masturbate (sic) Japan was a Tokyo fashion house that, “specializes in punk-inspired t-shirts ranging in price from $305 to $900 USD” for the “well-heeled fashion consumer who wants to appear to be part of the punk subculture” (Wiki). Ri-i-i-ight.