The “Sportio” is the newest Japanese cellphone that displays your GPS route, average speed, calories burned as well as a running log and charts of your workout results. Produced by Toshiba, this mobile phone also can work as wireless music player with Bluetooth headphones with a music step “BEAT RUN” function to keep your cadence.
Peter Payne’s blog mentioned that for the, “40th anniversary of Shonen Jump, the popular manga weekly, and Japanese canned coffee maker Roots is putting on a major advertising campaign for its new coffee called Innocent Blend.”
Actually, it’s called ‘Innocent Brew’ and to promote the brand, JT who sells the coffee brand Roots, is issuing many of Japan’s Jump comics from Dragonball Z to Death Note. See the JT Roots COFFEE [ルーツコーヒー] website for more fun from Jump magazine as below.
Also check out the official JUMP website for the 40th anniversary www,jump40th.com as well this mega-kool flickr photo slide show of Japanese Canned Coffee.
Meow, bow-wow: Japanese website reunites pet families
Mon May 26, 2008 - TOKYO (Reuters Life!) …new Facebook-style website in Japan can help your pet find their real family, as well as friends… Pedi.jp, which went online last month, allows owners to create profiles for their pets that include their favorite foods and tricks, post photos and blogs, and exchange messages with other members. Founder Keishin Tanaka said …”More customers have been asking about finding their pet’s long-lost parents and siblings… So I decided to address their demands” …more…
The Nikkei reports that the Japan’s Sapporo brewery is going to brew a “space beer” in November. The photo shows Okayama University professor, Manabu Sugimoto (R), and his grad student Elena Shagenardanova (L) of Russia with a sheaf of “space barley” from the first generation of barley that was germinated on the Russian space lab.
Watch the Japanese chocolate mushrooms, Kinoko No Yama phallically terrorize the 7-11 store in this TV commercial by Meiji. Click to view. “Kinoko no yama”[きのこの山/] (mushroom mountain) are phallic, mushroom-shaped chocolate snacks with biscuit stems. Fun hey?
The wags over on Slashdot are all in titter about this Yamaha-branded concept motorcycle.
Art Center College of Design shows Yamaha-branded wearable motorcycle concept HellForLeather.com May 22, 2008… Design student Jake Loniak decided the idea of a machine as an extension of the body should be taken literally… Loniak’s concept is an electric vertically parking motorcycle controlled by 36 pneumatic muscles with 2 linear actuators...more...
Ok, ok, this exo-skeleton does seems to stretch the concept/rationality of “wearable”… but hot-damn it’s electric powered and goes 0 to 60 mph in 3 seconds and tops out at 75 mph! (0 to 97 km/h in 3 seconds, top-ends at 120 km/h!) Powered by ultra-capacitors and batteries the in-wheel motor drives this Inspector Gadget contraption.
I could see myself using it to weave through Tokyo gridlock and avoiding the recent infamous 30,000 yen ($300 USD) tickets for parking on the street or sidewalks since there are almost no parking lots that have motorcycle parking places.
“Ride manner up campaign enforcement! ! Subtitle: Be born as the same twins.”
The Meitetsu, the Nagoya Railroad, in central Japan, attempts “manner up” ( phonetically written) with this campaign “enforcement” of posters and incessant announcements on their trains. Wearing a rather penile-looking green head the, “nuisance twins with the troubled pet name ‘Mana/Kana‘ “(I love wacky literal translations)…more...
The joke here is that twins’ names are “Mana” and “Kana” but in engrish Mana is ‘manners’ and Kana is an alternate Japanese reading that could mean sad/bad.
Speaking of so sad/KANAshii/, see the previous 3Yen report about Japanese TRAiNG®.
This “La-la” tourmaline-embedded bustier graced this week’s Beauty World Japan exhibition in Tokyo.
Why tourmaline-embedded girdle?
It’s a Japanese tin-foil hat … tourmaline is thought of as a “miracle electric stone” said to neutralize harmful emissions from cellphones and cure bad moods by emitting fields of negative ions. Ri-i-i-ght.
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Powered by ultra-capacitors and batteries the in-wheel motor drives this Inspector Gadget contraption.
“Ride manner up campaign enforcement! ! 
phonetically written) with this campaign “enforcement” of posters and incessant announcements on their trains. Wearing a rather penile-looking green head the, “nuisance twins with the troubled pet name ‘Mana/Kana‘ “(I love wacky 
, see the previous 3Yen report about Japanese 
