Kousuke SUGIMOTO [Director] and Takayuki MANABE [Music] made this animated music video. Two more Youtube videos on the SugimotoKousuke Chanel.

Fellow traveler of the 3Yen, the Tokyo Genki blog, has posted the pandering of Quentin Tarantino (aka Tara-chan) for SoftBank cellphones in their famous talking dog commericals.

This is one of many commercials for Softbank’s “White Family Plan” cellphone service. Since it is a typically surreal Japanese commercial, the father is a white dog, the mother is Japanese, the daughter is a famous Japanese pop star and the elder brother is an African-American man.

An English translation for you to get the gist of the Japanese commercial is as follows:

( Text at beginning with arrow pointing to dog speaker: “A ‘daddy’ speaker which connects to your cell.”)

Mother: You’re really going to Tosa? (Tosa is a type of fighting dog and the old name for Kouchi city )

Father (dog): Yes.

Daughter: Even uncle “Tara?” (Tara is the Japanese nickname for Tarantino)

Tarantino: I am Tara-chan! Haaiiiiiyyyaaa, SAMARAI SPIRITAA!

Father: Is this dude serios…

Tarantino: (English) Samurai! ‘Cause Samurai’s are so cool… pull out the sword…

Mother: Calm down!

Tarantino: Ok.

(Phone rings)

Daughter: Phone call.

Tarantino’s wife: Is Tara there?

Mother: It’s your wife.

Tarantino’s wife: Tara?

Tarantino: This is Tara-chan, yes.

Tarantino’s wife: COME HOME RIGHT NOW!

Tarantino: Got it.

Father: Oh boy.

Narrator’s voice: You can get a speaker that connects to your phone.
(Text at end: “Talking daddy speaker” “Get your friends to sign up or introduce a new family member! See further details at your local retailer or on the web.”)

Translation thanks to GIZMODO.com.

Mo ‘betta…

Oddly for Christmas Eve, BBC radio offered a well-researched programme, “THE SAMURAI” (Thursday 9.00-9.45am, 24 December 2009). This show was on BBC Radio 4 as part of their series called “In Our Time”, which discusses major topics in history, science, religion, philosophy etc.

Sadly the BBC used nasty DRM in the program to prevent listening to it as downloaded podcast. So, I “found” an analog recording of the programme in plain old MP3 format (download it here: 43 minutes, 10MB) or listen to the streaming version below.
Enjoy!

THE SAMURAI

Tokyo snarkCast

The Rinka Blog today is offering their, “Annual Merry Christmas Bento Special” and tomorrow’s special will be, “Anime Christmas Bentos!”

… Click to view many other Xmas bento examples…

Although I know I must have posted the above photo of the girl in the four-leg “Inukoma” robot at the Tokyo Design Festa before, as well as the fundoshi/loincloth photo on the left, but I never knew much about what I thought was just an anonymous cosplay girl.
D’OH! After seeing years of her self-photographing cosplay, today I just noticed that Miss Ushijima’s identity was public with many details about her clever plan (English website) of self-promotion. For more semiNSFW photos on her Japanese-language websites, here and here (crappy machine translations).

–Cosplay girl is open for business!

Click to enlarge to semiNSFW sized photos

うしじまいい肉　ＤＶＤ動画サンプル　[todo]

Japan is in rub (love) the iPhone/iTouch, despite all the pooh-poohing of the polls, press and pundits such as:

• Wall Street Journal: iPhone Sees Slow Japan Sales
• Nikkei:Survey: 91% of Japanese Will Not Buy ‘iPhone’
• Wired.com: Why the Japanese Hate the iPhone
• whatjapanthinks.com: iPhone R.I.P. (because of no Japanese emoticons)

Obviously the polls, press and pundits got it all wrong—The charts below say it all.

iPhone, iPod Touch Growth Exploding Internationally
AdMob via businessinsider.com: Dec. 18, 2009
Apple’s (AAPL) devices are growing like a weed in Japan, according to new data from mobile ad firm AdMob….more...

Today I stumbled across a old friend, Vince (myspace.com), while reading a Japanese blog with a link to his old-skool, “Malice in Wonderland” animation from 1983.
What a sicko production.

Then again, these Youtube animations are proof of what happens when a guy studies Japanese too long.
WATCH IT AT YOUR OWN RISK.
To quote Vince in an interview in Vice Magazine.

…The Alice in Wonderland story has some great opportunities for this type of animation. Once, Malice in Wonderland was rented by a woman’s club by mistake to show at their meeting. There was an actual occurrence of “the aghast audience running from the room.” …more…

Rob Pongi, master of all things Japanese (except his ex-girlfriend) offers this iPhone app for Japanese sexual harassment writing to us:
“Here is a WONDAFURU video of the all-new Japanese Up-Skirt iPhone application.”

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.

Oh noooos!
Japanese terrorist ninja cuts down the Statue of Liberty.
…