Today’s Robots.net features “Japan’s Stupidest Robot”—the University of Tokyo’s YKRN robot that won the Bacarobo 2008 competition (baka = stupid, robo = robot). The championship has Three Stupid Robot Principles:
1. The Stupid Robot must be mechanical.
2. The Stupid Robot shall not be useful—it should be worthless as possible and not have any useful function for society.
3. The Stupid Robot shall make people laugh.

YouTube thanks to CScoutJapan.

Read more on the official website of Bacarobo.com (stupid machine translation)…

Breaking news via Kyodo Press.

The Japanese Word of the Year is “Hen” -…in this case meaning ‘Change’.
However, I am very used to being called in Japanese a “HEN-na gaijin”–literally “odd’ + ‘foreigner/alien’ as you can see on the right.
So, I just learned that I’m a “Changed Alien“, ha, ha.

Hen (adj-na,n) (1) strange; odd; peculiar; weird; curious; queer; eccentric; funny; suspicious; fishy; (2) unexpected; (3) change; (4) incident; disturbance; disaster; accident;

UPDATE:
‘Change’ voted Japan’s character of the year – Yahoo! News – Fri Dec 12, 4:02 PM ET
[The photo below shows] World’s heritage Kiyomizu temple priest Seihan Mori puts the finishing touch on a caligraphy …The public sent in 111,200 nominations for the kanji of the year. Of those, a majority 5.42 percent endorsed “change”… and “fall” to reflect the global market plunge.
“I think it is an expression of the Japanese people’s wishes to see political, economic and societal changes, as they were impressed by Mr. Obama’s message of change,” Mori said…

Story thanks to Omae Mona

A so-called “news” update from The Telegraph:

Japanese commuters told to be courteous as standards fall
Telegraph.co.uk – By Julian Ryall in Tokyo – 9:42PM GMT 06 Dec 2008
….Japan Railways [sic] has just launched a poster campaign urging women to “Please do it at home” – put their make-up on, that is….

This news report of, “Japan Railways [sic] has just launched a poster campaign” is wrong in a couple ways. The posters belong to the Tokyo Metro subway not Japan Railways, and the Metro’s campaign was launched eight months ago last April.

Check out this fun detail.

Ok, ok, the above poster is my Photoshop fun, but below is the OFFICIAL Tokyo Metro poster, which I saw for the start of the Projectile Vomiting Season in Japan.

–Tokyo Metro

Just in time for the end-of-the-year drinking parties*, the Tokyo Metro subway has started to put up new posters today reminding folks to barf at home and not on everyone on the train (as is the norm in Japan flickr).

The barf poster is one of the monthly series for the Tokyo Metro and railways brace for onslaught of holiday-season drunks (Japan Times).

*Called Bonenkai (in the Japanese language:
忘年会, lit. “forget the year gathering”).

Telegraph.co.uk’s photo

The poster series is aimed at cajoling the so-called ‘rude’ Japanese public to have better train manners. In previous months, posters reminded riders to:
– “Please party on the train!”
– “Not torture eyeballs on jostling trains“,
– “Please do it like a Moose”
– “DON’T SWIM IN FRONT OF THE TRAINS“
—”Please no umbrella golf on the platform”

–Mass exercises with “Gari-Gari” Brother, check.
–Beer-bong helmet, check.
–Superman t-shirt with diaper, check.
–Japanese TV show, check…

The comedic idea here is that Gari-Gari Brother (”garigarigarikuson”) must really know his exercise because his is an otaku NEET who really needs exercise.
Check out the crappy Japanese website of comedian garigarigarikuson (machine translation) and rough/direct translation of the YouTube info that reads: “Expo of laughter — exercises of a NEET”.

The randoseru, the leather backpack that every elementary school kid wears is a quintessential Japanese sight.
Red Randoseru are for girls, black ones are for boys and “Peach Backpacks” are for….

Original idea via: The Peach Backpack by Yen-Hsiang Skeet Wang — Yanko Design

In case you were wondering, Randoseru (Raenzel) is from the German word for rucksack.
Previously, the 3Yen featured the ultimate Randoseru-wearing Japanese schoolgirl robot, Strongmachine in this Polysics’ music video.
Boomp3.com

And finally, here’s a typical Japanese TV commercial for Randoseru, which makes me really want to buy one now…
NOT.

As part of the ongoing series of the Tokyo Metro’s “Train Manner” (sic) campaign, here’s October’s poster…

Click to view full-size poster.

Rest-of-the-story….
Playing “air golf”–visualization practice—on train platforms is one of the more entertaining hobbies of ever-madcap salarymen that you can observe in Japan. Golf visualization practice has results in a few deaths but mostly it’s just fun quirk of Japanese life. As well as traditional “air guitar,” I have seen air bowling, air ballroom dancing, and air badminton being practiced on subway and train platforms.

This monthly series of posters in the Tokyo subway are aimed at cajoling the so-called ‘rude’ Japanese public to have better train manners. In previous months, posters reminded riders to “Not torture eyeballs on jostling trains“, “Please do it like a Moose” and “DON’T SWIM IN FRONT OF THE TRAINS“.

Fun with a demure Japanese reporter presenting a story from a swine operation in Ibaraki Prefecture a few hours outside Tokyo.

The Youtube is titled “[News blooper] Sensitive Swine?” Judging from the hairstyle and clothes, this video tape from the 1980s.

Link thanks to Online Videos.

As a public service, I offer this morning’s Pink Ribbon PSA in HDTV clarity.

Click Click Clickie for full-size HDTV screenshot.

Lovingly, digitally-colorized photographs of the former Japanese Imperial Navy (machine translation)….

Battleship-carrier “Ise” under air attack at Kure Island

Today I noticed this post in Japanese on Kirei-navi.com (July 13, 2008). Kirei-navi wrote the following comments:

The ranking of which Japanese high school’s are the shortest!
How much longer will short skirts be popular?

The city of Kyoto seems to be considerably short, in these TV news program’s photos.

Click for full-size examples…