“Bagelheads“! Yikes, we manufactured a Japanese fad!

“Bagelheads” is just a name that was made up to joke about this body modification, but the mainstream press took the name as real, as you can see from the reports below.

Bagelheads the latest fad for Japanese teens: Mom hopes it stays in Japan
New Jersey On-Line — by Fiona Charles — Thursday July 02, 2009, 8:50 PM
Japanese teens are shooting silicone in their head to morph their faces. They call themselves bagelheads.
Have you seen the latest fad for teens in Japan? They are called bagelheads. Teens in Japan are injecting themselves with saline, which causes bumps in their heads.
The lumps and bumps created by the saline can be shaped and molded. The teens are calling themselves bagelheads. The disfigurement only last 24 hours. I have a hard time looking at these teens, and I just hope it stays in Japan and doesn’t make it’s way over to the States.

New ‘Bagel Head’ Fad Is Crazy!
RantRave - July 2
OK, Japan, we get it. You’re the king of weird.
A new “beauty” fad in Tokyo clubs has teens injecting themselves with bags of saline, disfiguring their heads! They call themselves “Bagel Heads” or “bagelheads.” ….more...

A quick Google search for the joke name “bagelheads” or “bagelhead” written in Japanese katakana results in zero hits:

“Bagelheads” is a great joke name for this 4-person “Japanese” trend, but both the Western mainstream press and the blogsphere is picking it up and reporting this fake tread as real, sheesh.

In addition, both of the reports express the facetious hope that this “Japanese” trend remains in Japan, even though it originated in the West, ha, ha.

Living in Japan sometimes is like living in a campy science fiction program–In this case “Thrall Collars” for Japanese factory slaves….

Wearable Sensors Help Analyze Behaviors of Factory Workers
July 3, 2009 - Nikkei Tech-On! – DSS Co Ltd, a Japanese firm that edits and processes digital maps based on survey data, started a service of recording the actions of factory workers for long hours and visualize them.
The tools used for collecting the data are (1) the “ankle sensor” to be attached to the leg of a worker for recording his or her movement, (2) the “milestone,” which will be installed in various places in the plant to know how long workers stay there and (3) the “small video camera” to be put in the chest pocket of the worker to record his or her action. …more…

PRIOR ART…

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daylife.com - July 3, 2009… hyper rescue robot “T-53 Enryu”, developed by Japanese robot venture Tmsuk… Kitakyushu Fire Department deployed the 2.8-meter tall, three-ton robot which can be operated manually by a person aboard it as well as by remote control to lift heavy objects with its two arms.

The earlier, smaller version of the same robot had an amusing appetite for humans as the 3Yen reported back in 2007: All Your Soylent Green are Belong to Us.

The crazies over on 2-Ch posted this gem…
Fuji TV’s Beauty Coliseum summer ‘09! (machine translation)
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NOTE: Page way down to the middle to see all the Before-vs-After photos.

Combine this brainwave control with Toyota’s i-Real electric vehicle covered on the 3Yen yesterday (2009-06-28), and BINGO, you have a winner.

BSI-TOYOTA Collaboration Center Develops Real-time Control of Wheelchairs with Brain Waves
June 29, 2009 - RIKEN - TOYOTA …succeeded in developing a system which utilizes one of the fastest technologies in the world, controlling a wheelchair using brain waves…new system fuses RIKEN’s blind signal separation1 and space-time-frequency filtering2 technology to allow brain-wave analysis in as little as 125 ms, as compared to several seconds required by conventional methods.…more…

Ahhh, just what Japan needs: More radioactive kaiju friends to romp with Godzilla.

Underwater sponges could soak up uranium for nuclear power stations in Japan 2009-06-29 MNN - Mother Nature Network…Government-funded scientists have drafted plans to place giant ‘uranium farms’ on the seabed to extract uranium from the ocean…
…Dr. Masao Tanada…believes that Japan could harvest all the uranium it needs from the Kuroshio Current, which flows along Japan’s eastern seaboard. He’s seeking funding to construct a uranium farm covering 400 square miles...more...

AND, if that’s not enough for you now…..

Japanese spacecraft finds uranium on moon
30th of June 2009, Softpedia
Uranium exists on the moon, according to new data from a Japanese spacecraft. Advertisement The findings are the first conclusive evidence for the presence of the radioactive element in lunar dirt, the researchers said. The revelation suggests that nuclear power plants could be built on the moon, or even that Earth’s satellite could serve as a mining source for uranium needed back home.…more…

Leave it Japanese officials to inject a bit a humor into a death…

Japan gov’t spokesman retracts Jackson gaffe
abs-cbnnews.com 06/26/09
Japan’s top government spokesman hurried Friday to retract potentially controversial remarks about the late pop icon Michael Jackson, who he said did not appear to be black because of his pale skin. “My knowledge (on Jackson) was very poor, but I didn’t get the impression that he was a black man because his face was all white,” Takeo Kawamura told reporters…more…

Last moonwalk

Via Robots.net here is “HINA,” the cutest little coffee making robot from Japan.

Yes, according to the robot’s blog clockwork.shikisokuzekuu.net most of the video is stop motion due to the limitations of robot’s strength/balance.

These postcard flavor Kit Kats don’t sound as bad as soy sauce chocolate Kit Kats or Drink Kit Kat.

Kit Kat Wins Cannes Media Grand Prix for Edible Postcard
- Advertising Age … the Japanese translation of Kit Kat — Kitto Katso means “surely win” — and the tradition of sending students good luck wishes before they take tough higher-education entrance exams. So Nestle partnered with Japan's postal service to create “Kit Kat Mail,” a postcard-like product sold only at the post office that could be mailed to students as an edible good-luck charm …more...

Better KitKat flavors the 3Yen reported on in the past include lemon cheese cake, macha (traditional Japanese powder green tea) and passionfruit KitKat.

I have no idea of the context of this sushi robot, but the signage in the background is Japanese.
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