The poster above for August is one of a monthly series of the Tokyo Metro aimed at cajoling the so-called ‘rude’ Japanese public to have better train manners.
One of Japan’s pervasive social problems is their culture of ijime/bullying. Check out this Toyota girl pushing around her robot “coworker” and how Mr. Roboto remains balanced even after pushed by the bully and is able to run away at 7 km/h (4.4 MPH, which is a 13 minute, 40 second mile).
The video above, “….demonstrates the running capabilities of the new humanoid robot. The robot takes a step every 340ms and has no contact with the ground for 100ms of that…more info at smart-machines.blogspot.com...
I wish the Japanese would work on more practical robots like this four-legged robot mule, which also gets bullied a lot.
UPDATE: Japan’s Miss Universe won’t wear kimono criticized as obscene Bloomberg, July 31, 2009
Japan’s candidate for the 2009 Miss Universe pageant will make adjustments to her costume after the black kimono outfit she had chosen was criticized as too revealing. Emiri Miyasaka, a 25-year-old from Tokyo, who won Japan’s preliminary contest in May, disclosed her official costume, created by French designer Ines Ligron and Japan’s Yoshiyuki Ogata, on July 22. …more...
First published 2009-07-22….
Yowaza! Miss Japan seems to have forgotten a lot of her clothing at her Tokyo send-off to the Miss Universe competition that will be held in the Bahamas on August 23.
daylife.com July 22, 2009–Miss Universe Japan Emiri Miyasaka wears a kimono costume during a send-off party in Tokyo ….. The costume will be used as her national costume when Miyasaka represents Japan in the 2009 Miss Universe international competition.
Weird, sexy “national costumes” has been Japan’s secret weapon for doing well in recent years at the Miss Universe international competition…the most (im)famous was Miss Universe in ninja high heels (2006).
The Japanese URL says it all “SKIN.html,” and this website of Japanese vending machines of such skins even includes my favorite machine from my former neighborhood. Click to view more “skin” street scenes….
Today the Tokyo heat was hell, but I gotta giggle at the lengths that the Japanese go to to stay cool.
Click to view in full-size technological glory.
Hmmm, let’s see. The air-conditioner head unit at the top of the photo blows out cool air into the room and the compressor on the left exhausts the heat into the room.
Japan Factiod No. 2,235: In the Great Hanshin (Kobe) Earthquake of 1995, 19% of people were killed by their crappy air-conditioners.
Japanese air conditioner photos via BoingBoing
.. a slide-show of photographs by Huschang Pourian, a designer living in Tokyo. Pourian is exhibiting his photographs of air conditioners ….. elements like tubes and wires destroying this order, going through walls, spreading chaos and confusion. Connected to these were white boxes with fans inside. I suddenly fell in love (visually) with these air conditioners and started chasing them….
But air conditioners are not just beautiful. Beside the fact that they make our lives much more comfortable….more…
Besides the fact that Japanese love of a visually “dynamic” living environment, “air-con” (air conditioners) are not included in rental properties in Japan. Central heating and cooling has been invented in Japan, so renters are on their own to find a solution to Japanese tropical heat. Dangling an air-con out the window is the standard-substandard solution here, meh.
This is amusing—Sumo wrestlers getting bullied by their hairdresser!
WTFBBQ! The Japan Sumo Association needs to start recruiting hairdressers.
Sumo stablemaster questioned over assault on hairdresser July 25, 2009 – The Mainichi Daily News— The Japan Sumo Association is questioning sumo stablemaster Oitekaze over the discovery that he and some his students assaulted a sumo hairdresser in March,…the stablemaster and several wrestlers attacked the hairdresser at the lodging facilities of the Oitekaze sumo stable in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, hitting him several times in the face….
…Commenting on the incident, Oitekaze indicated that the hairdresser had bullied wrestlers. ...more…
Dakimakura Dating
Here’s an interesting New York Times interview with an Japanese otaku/geek who like many is in true love with his dakimakura (dah-kee MAH-koo-rah) “hug pillow.”
Love in 2-D The New York Times — July 26, 2009 by Lisa Katayama–
..I joined the couple for lunch at their favorite all-you-can-eat salad bar in the Tokyo suburb of Hachioji, he insisted on being called only by this new nickname, addressing his body-pillow girlfriend using the suffix “tan” to show how much he adored her. Nemutan is 10, maybe 12 years old and wears a little blue bikini and gold ribbons in her hair. Nisan knows she’s not real, but that hasn’t stopped him from loving her just the same…more...
UPDATE –July 27th
Many people on the Internet have done some fact checking of the above New York Times story by Lisa Katayama and found that statistics she reported that “more than a quarter of men and women between the ages of 30 and 34 are virgins” were bogus or mistranslated.
Refer to: Nemutan’s revenge—Some fact checking-and reaction to the NYT story on anime fetishists.
More than half of school-age children feel lives are hectic AP — July 13, 2009
More than half of responding elementary, junior high and senior high school students feel their lives are hectic and they would like to sleep more, according to results of a survey by an educational research institute released Sunday.
The survey conducted in November by the Tokyo-based Benesse Educational Research & Development Center found that 49 percent of the elementary school students, 59 percent of the junior high students and 64 percent of the senior high school students responded they have hectic lives….more…
Sleep deprivation is the hallmark of Japanese work- and study-life. The standard phrase that mothers use to admonish their children in their school studies is, “(sleep) four hours pass, (sleep) five hours fail”. There even has been one study that has shown that Japanese babies are forced to sleep least of any country in the world.
Meet the Mori Girls, A New Japanese Subculture By Rebecca Milner – Trend Researcher, Tokyo — fashionsnoops.com JUNE 17, 2009… Meet the Mori Girls, a new band of women with a penchant for layers of delicate vintage and DIY fashion. In addition to knitting, journaling, and haunting second hand bookstores, these urban dreamers can be found with their heads in the clouds—or literally in the forest. “Mori” means “forest” in Japanese.
….Just shy of three years later, the Mori Girls community is now over 30,000 strong. If the GothLolis have Harajuku, and the aforementioned Yamamba had Shibuya, then these figurative forest dwellers are colonizing an area of cyberspace with profile pages and blogs devoted to their yarui (loose and relaxed) lifestyle….more…
Terrified of being seen alone, students eat in toilets IHT/Asahi: July 7, 2009
… a notice banning the consumption of food in university toilets is more sad than scary. A little research sheds light on a growing phenomenon: Some students are so lonely they shut themselves inside toilet cubicles to eat. The notice, with the same message, the same design and the same warning but with different school names, has been posted over the last few months in toilets at numerous universities. “The following activities are banned in toilet stalls,” says the notice, citing smoking, graffiti and eating. All schools flatly deny putting up the warnings, raising the question of who did it and why. ….
…. it is better to eat in a toilet than to be perceived as friendless and spotted dining alone in the school cafeteria…more…
This odd habit is called “benjo-meshi“, literally toilet meal. Although this is being reported as “news” it has been a long-time phenomenon in Japan. Photos of this notice banning the consumption of food in university toilets have been posted for several years (see the photos below dated 2005 and 2007, respectively).
I have noticed over many years that reclusive salarymen hiding in the toilets at lunchtime to eat and hide from coworkers.
Recently because of my mega-broken leg, I have come to curse these wacko hikikomori (social isolates) because they tie up the few rare handicapped toilets that exist. I would love to put up such fake signs. I can imagine that the reason for, “all schools flatly deny putting up the warnings,” is that students are making the fake signs to mock the crazy behavior of the toilet lunchers.
- 
“(sleep) four hours pass, (sleep) five hours fail”. There even has been one 
has massive numbers of hits as 
, literally toilet meal. Although this is being reported as “news” it has been a long-time phenomenon in Japan. Photos of this notice banning the consumption of food in university toilets have been posted for several years (see the photos below dated 2005 and 2007, respectively). 
