Picture of the Day
Pole dancing Japan Today: 31 July, 3008

Women practice pole dancing at a fitness club in Osaka.

The heat must be getting to them.
That is, it has been over 30C/86F for weeks now and it is just the beginning of Japanese summer.

Or, maybe they are practicing for work at this Japanese club.

My drinking buddy “Mulboyne found this strange English manga from Kinky/Kinki about “Bio-coke Man” — (Part 1, pdf) and (Part 2, pdf) who helps produce steel from old Japanese tea leaves and coffee grounds.

Melting iron with tea…
Kippo News - Kansai in Focus: Vol.15 No.571 Wednesday, July 09, 2008
… makers of tea, coffee and other soft drinks that have come to be consumed extensively have spent huge sums of money for the disposal of great quantities of residue.
…. the Kinki University’s School of Science and Engineering, has been developing ‘bio-coke’ capable of producing high temperatures for use in iron manufacture from the remnants of tea and other waste materials…more…

The Tokyo Metro’s August poster for “Train Manner” (sic):
DON’T JUMP IN FRONT OF THE TRAINS

As I have mentioned before, this is a monthly series of posters in the subway cajoling the so-called ‘rude’ Japanese public to have better train manners. In previous months, posters reminded women to “Not torture eyeballs on jostling trains.”

Hee, hee.

What the world looks like naked: The amazing image of Earth’s geology laid bare
Daily Mail / 7:46 AM on 01st August 2008
This amazing image reveals what our world looks like when it is stripped bare - shorn of all its plants, soils, water and man-made structures. This, and other never-seen-before images of the Earth, were unveiled at One Geology - the world’s biggest ever geological mapping project…more….

Today CrunchGear posted about the new Sega Toys robot animal, the “Dream Hamster.”

Skipping the Richard Gere jokes (the gerbil’s name was withheld by request of the family), in their Japanese press release, Sega describes these disturbingly realistic robotic pets as, “moving with a palm restlessly anywhere when you grasp it slightly by hand and push the abdominal switch to reproduce the movement of restless hamster characteristic.”
Sega is targeting the Dream Hamster to Japanese woman ages 20 to 50 as well as children. On August 8, Sega will start selling (only in Japan) the robo Dream Hamster for 1,200 yen, about $11 USD.

—special by the 3Yen’s correspondent-at-large, Den4

As America has the Hilton sisters, Japan has the “Kano Sisters.”
More photos.
In Japan they are best known for being known and their over-the-top plastic surgery, but the sisters Kyoko and Mika will be featured at the Otakon anime convention in Baltimore to announce a new anime project with character designs by pop culture illustrator Matsushita Shin of Production IG (”Ghost in the Shell, Blood the Last Vampire).
How will the sisters react to American Otaku and how will American otaku react to the Kano Sisters at he Press Conference is on August 9th ought to be fun.

Just as the 3Yen.com has covered in past summers, here’s the obligatory Japanese summer time treat….eel ice cream, pit viper ice cream, and ox tongue ice cream. YUM!
Via the Mainichi news photospecials.

July 31 /PRNewswire/Triumph Awards Midori Matsuo, 20, Japan, for the Most Inspiring Lingerie Design at the International Final of the Triumph Inspiration Award ‘08 in Beijing. (Click for full-size photo.)

However, the press releases didn’t show the first conceptualization of this lips-lingerie design with NHK’s ‘Domo-kun’.

‘New’ Electronic Paper has been announced for the 402th time, sheesh.

Esquire to geeks: hack our e-paper magazine cover
- Boing Boing Gadgets -
Cheap, disposable e-paper magazines on subway newsstands and on the racks of your airport’s Hudson News. Each one thin, flexible, disposable. Just a couple of pages, with bright, glossy color, wirelessly updated with the latest issues of your favorite rag. Need something to read? Buy a new e-mag — or press a button to refresh your virtually dog-eared copy to this month’s edition.
That’s about five years away, just like it has been for the last decade.
But deputy editor Peter Griffin can tell you what magazine stands will look like this October, when then the 75th Anniversary issue of Esquire with an e-paper cover …more…

‘New’ Electronic Paper has been announced for the 401th time, sheesh.
Flexible paper-like screens that can that you can roll up into and put in your pocket have been “the stuff of hype for more than a decade.”
As many times as this has been announced, I might have well have traded in my old flying car for a new personal hyperdrive spaceship and timemachine. Meh.

Sony, research body develop high-resolution, roll-up display panel - report
TOKYO —-A research team from Sony Corp and the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research has developed a new type of display panel that is extremely thin and flexible enough to be rolled up like a piece of paper, with an industry-high resolution of 79 dots per inch (dpi)….…more….

Also refer to my previous 3Yen.com reports:
—Here’s a flexible, paper-like computer screen for my flying car!
—
Japan’s newest e-paper with 4,096 colors…
—Here’s a flexible, paper-like computer screen for my flying car!
—April launch date for 20 years in the making for “e-paper”

Here’s something you don’t see everyday. A Japanese diplomat dressed in full-drag traditional hakama attending a pig kill and then getting wasted at a kava ritual.

Tonga’s king given pigs, food in traditional coronation
The Citizen: (AFP) 30/July/2008 ….A guest from Japan walks past slaughtered pigs to accept the offering of roast pork on behalf of King George Tupou V of Tonga (royal protocol prohibits a Tongan from doing this) during the taumafa kava ritual in the sacred Pangai Lahi gathering area of Nuku’alofa on July 30…more…

Of course, the news does not report the rest-of-the-story: the Japanese gift of The Silence of the Swine is part of a larger foreign “aid” package. Japan is giving Toga millions in exchange for their vote at the International Whaling Commission allowing Japan to continue killing whales that NOBODY in Japan wants to eat (there’s a 5 year supply of whale meat piled up unused in government-sponsored freezers now).

Yesterday I wrote about how Japanese sure do love their face masks, and today I was amused to find on the Rinkya Blog these Disney-themed Lilo & Stitch Sick Masks.

Rinkya Blog….In Japan, when one is sick or during flu season, it is common to see them with these masks on to prevent illness spreading (whether it actually works or not is another story) ….more…

Japan’s Air Purifier: Olympians to Wear Dust Masks!
medindia.net - Tuesday, July 29, 2008 at 11:25:10 AM — The Japanese Olympic squad seems to be taking no chances in protecting itself from the pollution in Beijing. The delegation will carry 500 dust masks for industrial use to guard against the Chinese city’s notorious air pollution, a corporate official said Monday. Koken, a major Japanese maker of respirators, gas masks and air purifiers, has provided the masks for free to the Japanese Olympic Committee for possible use in training at the Beijing Games…more…

Japanese wearing masks to cope with Beijing’s filth. Sure…. they look like terrorists trying to hide something, but hey it’s China so they will be safe…..ri-i-i-ight.

The Japanese sure do love their face masks that I previously previously covered my reports on the 3Yen.com like the Masked flu-fighting - Japanese Nanoblock(tm) and the
Get well soon mask.

And, be sure to check out this video of the Japanese Olympic Teams practicing their entrance into the Games’ opening ceremony wearing their gas masks, ha, ha.

Click to view video.