Now this is perfect gift for the Japanese otaku/perv– a wallet made of schoolgirl “bloomers” (gym suit bottoms).
The Japanese Akiba blog describes them (machine translation) in the following breathless prose: “Romance for a man is new lifestyle product–a cute item of the palm size that is simple and is full of beautilities of an elegant design…just the thing to show it off your friends and the workplace.” The perv-wallet is packaged with its related “Strawberries” manga as though it is a special edition comic.
Japanese wankers buy these burusera/bloomers (Wiki) for their fantasy romances with pre-high-school girls. Eew.
Tokyo elementary school children, wearing fire-proof dunce caps for a nationwide earthquake drill. These disaster drills are held every year around the the anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 to prepare for the next Big One.
Japan conducts quake drills on 1923 quake memorial day Tuesday, September 01, 2009 Tokyo: An estimated 795,000 people from Tokyo and 30 other prefectures took part in annual anti-earthquake drills conducted by the central and local governments Tuesday, the 86th anniversary of the 1923 killer quake...more..
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.
Frequent commenter here on 3Yen, MARKed TRAIL, sent in these gems of engrish signs in Tokyo centered around the Japanese spelling of Ass/Earth, which are homonyms in their Katakana writing system.
First is a security company, “A.S.S.”
Second is the Assfairy fragrance—“The perfume the snares the man for whom Miss Hippopotamus aimed at in an instant.”
And finally is the perennial engrish favorite, “Asse Chocolate.”
Student drowns while testing concrete canoe Mainichi – August 17, 2009 OSAKA – A university student here died after a test on a concrete canoe in the Yodogawa River went disastrously awry on Sunday afternoon...more…
Ok, ok, if you stop giggling so will I. Creating concrete canoes are common engineering competition throughout the world—the idea being to make the seemingly unfloatable float—It’s considered integral part of a civil engineer’s education (Wiki).
Ok, you may go back to giggling about drowning during a concrete canoe test (because I certainly am).
Today, I stumbled across this odd photo of a “gutter pin” from a huge bowling center in Yokohama* that is being torn down.
One of the oddities of Japan is that almost all bowling alleys here have the same giant 5-meter bowling pin made of fiberglass mounted on their roofs.
For some mysterious reason, these massive bowling pins never fall off during typhoons even when the building it is mounted on is severely damaged (too bad Japanese buildings are not created with the same quality as these advertising objects).
*Here’s an urban exploration video of ruins of the “gutter pin” building taken last year.
Odd EngRish factoid:
If you look up the Japanese translation for “bowling,” you will find it has the almost the same pronunciation as “boring”—Most Japanese cannot distinguish or say either word correctly. This results in all sorts of fun confusion when Japanese people ask an English speaker anything about bowling or ask gaijin/foreigners to join them.
The Elephant Kid aka “ESUZOU-kun” is supposed be posted on the front window of most convenience store”SAFETY STATION” signs.
Open 24/7, convenience stores are wrangling with Japanese government officials to curb their late night operations to help combat global warming. However, the Japan Franchise Association is countering with this Elephant campaign saying that….”Convenience stores that stay open 24 hours serve an essential role as a refuge for potential crime victims or simply for people in need of help. Convenience stores provide a refuge for lost children or women seeking to escape stalkers…” –japantimes .co.jp
In our 2006 report Robot Love, the 3Yen covered a robot called, “Saya,” who was propped up as a receptionist at the Science University of Tokyo. Judging from the the expression on the face Saya the fem-bot, she did not have much job satisfaction. Now looking at her face, Saya seems much happier as a robo-teacher at a demonstration primary school in Tokyo (even though they did force her to wear the same yellow women’s suit for the past five years).
Robot teacher that can take the register and get angry –School pupils are to be taught by the world’s first robot teacher in one of the most radical uses so far of android technology.– Telegraph.co.UK 06 Mar 2009— Robot teacher: Named Saya, she can speak different languages, carry out roll calls, set tasks and make facial expressions. The device, created by scientists after 15 years of research, is being trialled at a primary school in Tokyo.
Named Saya, she can speak different languages, carry out roll calls, set tasks and make facial expressions –including anger– thanks to 18 motors hidden behind her latex face.…more…
According to the Erosblog, the Japanese Ministry of Education made two movies on a ‘girl Tarzan’ theme. The above photo comes from the book Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema by Jasper Sharp (2008), nothing survives of these movies except a handful of publicity stills such as this one from Cave of Lust with the actress Aki Ema and her lucky monkey.
The Japanese weather forecasting company Weathernews is deploying nationwide 500 of these “Pollen-Robo”—pollen counting robots to monitor to pollen levels as the allergy season begins in Japan.
The Weathernews will ask volunteer monitors to place the Pollen-Robo robots outside their dwelling to record in real-time the pollen, temperature, humidity and barometric pressure, which will then be relayed via the Internet back to the Skynet company. To a “benefit” to the volunteer monitors, the Terminators Pollen-Robo will light up through a range of five colors to indicate pollen levels and for added fun it will have two glowing LED eyes.
- 
play
–Click for full-size photo.
by Jasper Sharp (2008), nothing survives of these movies except a handful of publicity stills such as this one from Cave of Lust with the actress Aki Ema and her lucky monkey.
