Right now the cherry blossoms started to bloom and the Tokyo Anime Fair 2008 is happening. All the Japanese TV channels and studios promote anime.
A booth assistant dressed as “Doronjo” Yahoo! News Photos via Reuters
Thu Mar 27, 3:18 AM ET…. character that appears in the Japanese anime “Yatterman”, poses while visitors take photographs at the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2008 March 27, 2008.
Read more on Yatterman (Wikipedia), one of the top three anime programs now running on Japanese TV.
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 .
I’ve been bumping into Moai statues and wondering about these fake Tokyo Tiki gods for many years now. Besides the famous Shibuya Moai (above left & below right), I have several Moai by my Ota Ward Office (below left).
Actually, the Ota Ward Office and Kamata Station area of Tokyo has a full alien invasion of Moai statues and I have taken the photos below of just a few of them.
All these Moai statues seem to be rather out of place in Tokyo. Finally, a few days ago I stumbled across the very “Japanese” reason for all of them.
It seems that back in 1988 the Tokyo island of Nijima gave all these Moai statues to Tokyo to commemorate 100 years of being under Tokyo’s administrative supervision. The only industry of Nijima Island is tourism and quarrying Koga (rhyolite) stone, which is mostly used to make “moyai art.” In this case, public works to give jobs to the otherwise unemployed in the off-season Nijima folks by making hundreds of Moai heads that are given as public art “gifts” all over Japan.
I love it when this Thai group called, “Neko Jump”, does cutesy, twin-idol, “moe” better than the original Japanese hyper-saccharine music. As the French blogger Tengoku calls it: “L’attaque des clones.“
NEKO JUMP (Cat Jump) [ネコジャンプ] is Thailand’s answer to PUFFY and their Thai video is complete with Japanese background, lettering and graphics. Here they are singing their song, “Pu”—pronounced ‘Poo‘—and they kiss and lose their tops by the end of the video of course.
Giant Ultraman statue erected at Fukushima Airport Mainichi Japan / February 24, 2008
FUKUSHIMA — A giant statue of Japanese action hero Ultraman has been placed in Fukushima Airport’s terminal building with officials hoping it will boost passenger numbers. The 3-meter-high statue…more…
*WARNING! There may not be any posts on the 3Yen until Friday February 29.
I am currently traveling backwards in time to try to prevent you from seeing this message you. If you are reading this, I have apparently failed.
Buy hey, don’t worry. There’s a chance that the world won’t blow up at all. It is only few blog posts, right?
I should return to the present late in the evening February 28th. Given the vagaries of time travel, I may have limited access to Internet so just wait please.
Wish me luck!
Call this a Public Service Announcement of the thisisgoingtosuck type but be warned that it seems that a live-action Akira DiCaprio is on the way. Yuck.
DiCaprio, Warner Bros. in for live-action ‘Akira’ hollywoodreporter.com - Feb 21, 2008—Anime classic “Akira” is getting the live-action big screen treatment courtesy of Leonardo DiCaprio and Warner Bros.
Ruairi Robinson has been hired to direct what would ideally be a two-part epic. Gary Whitta is writing the adaptation, which DiCaprio will produce via his Appian Way shingle…more…
A longer article on the AKIRA films (two are being planned) can be found at today’s The Register.
And for more Akira fun, check out my previous 3Yen Akira reports:
—The “DETONATOR” bike
For many years, the so-called “hemline theory” holds that short hemlines predict a rising economy and higher stock prices while longer hemlines mean the economy is in the dumps. Now Japan has come up the “Hair Cut Indicator”–That is, the current fashion trend toward short and messy hair styles for women bodes badly for the Japanese economy.
Japanese women hairstyles track economy ups and downs Reuters - Feb. 17, 2008—Women tend to wear their hair long when Japan’s economy is doing well and short when there is a slump, the Nikkei business daily reported, citing a survey .conducted by Japanese cosmetics company Kao Corp. As for Japan’s future economic performance, the Nikkei pointed to expectations for a trend towards shorter hairstyles....more…
For more about the “hemline indicator”, here is a three minute video clip showing the connection between short skirts, fashion trends and the economy’s financial health.
Japanese robo-cutie, “Hatsune Miku,” sings the national anthems of France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, UK and USA in a amazing Japanese accent. Since Miss Hatsune is a Yamaha-created synthesizer software product, VOCALOID2, she “sings” the lyrics as they are transcribed into Japanese syllables…many syllables in Western languages do not have a match in Japanese so her singing is charmingly twisted.
You can also listen to or download these national anthems by Hatsune Miku in a iPod-ready MP3 format here (if you wait a moment after clicking the song):
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.
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via Mil’s flickr
Click for the original full view.
In the previous report, 
I love it when this Thai group called, “Neko Jump”, does cutesy, twin-idol, “
For many years, the so-called “hemline theory” holds that short hemlines predict a rising economy and higher stock prices while longer hemlines mean the economy is in the dumps. 
Now Japan has come up the “Hair Cut Indicator”–That is, the current fashion trend toward short and messy hair styles for women bodes badly for the Japanese economy.
