Boobies are so hard to catch in Japan that they came up with this new “UFO Catcher”—a claw vending machine or toy crane machine. via Mil’s flickr[1]
This arcade game lets the player manipulate the controls for a minute or less trying to grab a prize, usually plush toys and occasionally more “creatively” in Japan, silicon boobies like these, as well as live animals such as lobsters or turtles. See our previous report: Robot dog catcher debuts in Japan .
UPDATE:It seems that Reuters reads Japanese blogs now…
Stop waffling: Japan invents the moffle
Reuters —Tue Mar 18, 2008 11:33pm EDT
TOKYO (Reuters Life!) - Japanese pastry connoisseurs and technology fans have found a new obsession: the “moffle”, a cross-over between a waffle and Japan’s traditional “mochi” rice cake.
Made by toasting a rectangular slab of “mochi” paste in a Belgian waffle maker or a special moffle machine, the moffle is served as a dessert with ice-cream or chocolate sauce, or as a savory snack with cheese, ham or cod roe.
[…big snip…]
Mochi, mostly sold as soft, round little cakes, are among Japan’s most popular sweets, although every year there are reports of elderly people choking on the chewy, sticky mass.
Since I have my own Rice Ranch here in Japan, I am forced to find uses for mochi leftover from New Years. Not knowing this was now “trendy”, this year I tried cramming some mochi rice cakes into my electric waffle maker.
My moffles weren’t bad and somehow they seemed less bland than regular methods of mochi munching.
1. From Wikipedia:
Mochi is very sticky and somewhat tricky to eat. Every new year, the Japanese media reprts how many people die from choking on mochi, usually elderly. Because it is so sticky, it is difficult to dislodge via the Heimlich maneuver and lifesaving experts say that a vacuum cleaner is efficient for stuck mochi.
Talk about morning surprises…
As the aftermath to a party, this morning I discovered this left-over
Japanese snack on my dining room table: dried ‘Personal Squid‘.
Ryann Connell, my drinking buddy and reporter for the infamous Japanese tabloid, The Mainichi Daily News, has his own blog, Ry-ZingSun.com, where he posts all the randy news that cannot be printed in the serious-scurrilous rag, the Mainichi.
Maybe if I plug his Ry-ZingSun here on the 3Yen, Ryann will finally take off his sexy yellow kangaroo suit and shout/pop for a couple of beers at the Araku bar in Tokyo’s sleazy Golden-Gai district, hee, hee.
Ain’t That a… Shamisen? WFMU’s Beware of the Blog: February 13, 2008 (MP3s)…In not-so-ancient Japan, the inferior status of women and the disabled…you can only imagine the island nation’s treatment of its unsighted females. Cast out by a disdainful society, these doubly afflicted souls nevertheless crafted for themselves a new identity as wandering musicians, spreading news and social commentary while eking out a threadbare existence of alms……Known as goze, blind women shamisen players have been traveling and performing a circuit of remote villages dating back to the early 17th century…
With their shamisen, fretless 3-string banjos, blind female singer/story-tellers would wander old Japan in small troops of two or three with a partially sighted leader. Singing the blues was the only way they could feed themselves if their family couldn’t. Listen to and download the goze girls’ MP3s that public radio station, WFMU, has posted.
If cinema schlockmeister, Quentin Tarantino, needs another mega-obscure 1960s J-pop song to make a third film of the “Kill Bill” epic, here’s the perfect tacky tune: MINI MINI LOVE by Katsuko Kanai circa 1967.
This Japaneseque video is what YouTube was made for!
Marvel in wonder at this frolicking Japanese man wearing a horse mask and a slingshot mankini as he brews up a batch of Amanita muscaria aka Sacred Soma magic mushrooms. –2008/Jan/28
Back in 2006 I wrote about, Free Hugs - Any takers in Tokyo?
I was very dubious that the Free Hugs Campaign would amount to much in cold-fish Japan where nobody hugs in public. Right off, the Japanese huggers only use signs written in English as you see (since in Japanese it would look insane/perverted).
Well, I was proven wrong. FREE HUGS [フリーハグ] JAPAN has become an institution at Harajuku’s freakazoid bridge. Every Sunday there will be some freakazoids (wallpapers.3yen.com) with signs soliciting hugs. However, my photographer friend, MasaMania, posted these camera-phone photos of too FREE HUGS.
I think I will go to Akihabara’s open street afternoon on Sunday to get my my free hugs from now on.
via Mil’s flickr[1] 
… Buy your own booby from Rinkya Stores via this product’s page.
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Click for the original full view.
Talk about morning surprises…
