Yes, Japanese girls are short but these Japanese CRUEL SHOES by Junko Shimada bring a new meaning the term “fashion victim.”

Reuters – Tue Oct 6, 2009…creation by Japanese designer Junko Shimada as part of her Spring/Summer 2010 women's collection for Cacharel house during Paris Fashion Week October 6…more...

To quote the Prophet, Steve Martin from his best-selling book, Cruel Shoes:

Steve Martin — Cruel Shoes

Nothing says Yokoso/Welcome to Japan more than a squid…and better yet, a ROBOT SQUID!

Pink Tentacle…Hakodate showcased a pair of squid robots designed to attract attention to their area…. some entertaining tourism promotion videos...more...

ALL HAIL ROBO CTHULHU!

And of course, here is 3Yen.com’s all-time favorite squid news:
—The Kraken attacks Japanese parking lot!
–TASTES LIKE CHICKEN or squid
–The Kraken attacks Japanese parking lot!
–Japanese drinks with ‘tempting aroma of squid’

It’s hard to tell the purpose of the “Ancients” in creating this gold artifact, but it’s amusing to think of all the trouble the Japanese company had deciding what to call this gold geegaw .

Photo from ReutersPictures – 2009 Oct 7….Japan's top bullion house Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo, looks at a gold artifact using 15kg of pure gold in total …more...

Here’s a more mundane definition of “artfact,” but I am sure that somebody thought it would be good for marketing.

Previous 3Yen reports related to the mysteries of the Ancients include:
—Japanese Stargate mysteriously appears in Australia
—Stargate Mt Fuji
—Japanese schoolgirl contemplates the Stargate
—Tokyo Ginza’s Goa’uld Sarcophagus Salon

Last week Japan had their Home Care & Rehabilitation Exhibition in Tokyo. This Japanesque Rube Goldberg device was featured on the always informative Japanprobe.com.

HOWEVER, right now as a wheelchair user*, I find Toyota is being a bit disingenuous about this “robotic” roof rack for wheelchairs.

• The concept of roof rack for wheelchairs has been around since the 1960s—It’s a mostly forgotten, dead-end design that is hated by users for being cumbersome and prone to jamming (the handicapped user has no way to stand up and unjam the device)
• This roof rack requires an X-folding type of wheelchair, which are old-fashioned and heavy (3-8 kg heavier). Modern wheelchairs fold flat after popping the wheels off (quick release hubs) and would not work this roof rack system.
• Independent wheelchair users prefer to roll up as fast as possible to the driver’s door, fling themselves in the driver’s seat, pop the wheels off the chair, and throw wheels and collapsed chair into the front passenger’s seat and foot-well. My best time is 20 seconds. More severely disabled wheelchair users use a van with a wheelchair lift. Nobody wants that Toyota roof rack system (which looks like an OEM or a copy of the failed roof rack systems from the States and UK).
• The best car “wheelchair system” in Japan is no system at all–Just a standard Honda Odyssey with the mainstream options for a power sliding door, a few of the passenger seats removed and 180 degree swiveling driver’s seat.
• The Toyota Prius (aerodynamic drag of cd 0.26) with that huge roof rack added would create enough drag to eliminate the advantage of having a hybrid drive-train. Prius owners have had their mileage drop from 47 to 36 mpg (US) with one kayak on top and this roof rack is wider and less aerodynamically shaped than a kayak.

* I have been in a wheelchair since mid June
with a mega-farkqued broken leg, and I spent
couple years in a wheelchair in my college days
due to paralysis caused by a rappelling injury.

Also refer to the related 3Yen report on the handicapped—The mysterious “Blue Shamrock” car sticker that means the Japanese driver is handicapped by too much Irish whiskey. ;-)

One of the most popular topics if the past four years on the 3Yen is the fraudulent HanaHana™–Get your big nose beauty!
The industrial-strength clothespin is clipped onto a Japanese nose to make it “tall” (make the bridge of the nose more prominent and humped). However, IT DOES NOT WORK and this product constitutes medical fraud in most countries.

However, today I found an even more insane version of the fraudulent nose clip: NOSE ELECTROCUTION…

Enlarge to the full-size photo, 800×600.
Photo thanks to gnosis / john r’s flickr photostream, “[Japanese]Models in Bondage (Set).”

The always charming Mari diary (blog) is something, “worse than Azuki Pepsi(red bean Pepsi), SOY SAUCE SODA.”

(Demented machine translation)

*‘Oishi’ aka “delicious” is a delightfully trite expression Japanese use every five minutes in order to drive gaijin/foriegners crazy when they are offered Surging Eel soda (3Yen).

Over on the A Rinkya Blog, I noticed they are selling “brewski” for dogs.
See for yourself …more…

If you look carefully at the labels, they read “wan-wan” (Japanese for ‘bow-wow’). As for other languages…

On the FG forum, 2triky posted this seeming fake, Japanese TV commercial for Bandai’s “Ikemen Bank”(pretty-boy bank).

However, it turns out to be real product and it even has a movie version!(?)

For more details read, NipponCinema.com.

This Japanese TV program on YouTube shows ladies the use of an “Under-hair Template“ (aka PubicHairPattern).

The phone giant, NTT-DoCoMo, plans to utilize the ’surplus wood’ of Japan with mobile phone named “TOUCH WOOD.”
To quoth the Immortals, Beavis and Butthead:
“Whoa dude. Did they just say touching their wood?”

–Cue the the sound of Beavis and Butthead sniggering…

DOCOMO Develops Mobile Phone Prototype Using Surplus Wood
Tokyo, Sept 24, 2009 – (press release) – NTT DOCOMO announced today it has developed the mobile phone prototype made with the surplus wood …The authentic cypress wood body of the prototype, which is named TOUCH WOOD….more…

PRIOR ART


Fair use – Parody
Refer to UrbanDictionary.com :Wood.