Nothing says Yokoso/Welcome to Japan more than a squid…and better yet, a ROBOT SQUID!
Pink Tentacle…Hakodate showcased a pair of squid robots designed to attract attention to their area…. some entertaining tourism promotion videos...more...
ALL HAIL ROBO CTHULHU!
And of course, here is 3Yen.com’s all-time favorite squid news:
—The Kraken attacks Japanese parking lot!
–TASTES LIKE CHICKEN or squid
–The Kraken attacks Japanese parking lot!
–Japanese drinks with ‘tempting aroma of squid’
Following the tradition here on the 3Yen of the past 12 months of Tokyo Metro Manners posters, please enjoy the creative efforts of AK47.tumblr.com.
Click to view full-size version on AK47.tumblr.com
–Further explanation about “Yuri play (Wiki)”–
It’s hard to tell the purpose of the “Ancients” in creating this gold artifact, but it’s amusing to think of all the trouble the Japanese company had deciding what to call this gold geegaw .
Photo from ReutersPictures – 2009 Oct 7….Japan's top bullion house Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo, looks at a gold artifact using 15kg of pure gold in total …more...
Here’s a more mundane definition of “artfact,” but I am sure that somebody thought it would be good for marketing.
Previous 3Yen reports related to the mysteries of the Ancients include:
—Japanese Stargate mysteriously appears in Australia
—Stargate Mt Fuji
—Japanese schoolgirl contemplates the Stargate
—Tokyo Ginza’s Goa’uld Sarcophagus Salon
The Mainichi has a slide-show of the Tokyo “Itasha G Fesuta“: Itasha is the Japanese word for cars with freakazoid paint jobs* with characters from anime and manga and video games, and Fesuta is the mangled Japanese pronunciation of the word “festival.” The event also featured cosplayers dressed as popular female characters (but half of the cosplayers were male).
Click to view slideshow.
Photos: Anime fans rev up ‘otaku’ car festival
The Mainichi Daily News -October 5, 2009
*Full Disclosure:
Here is a photo of my Hello Kitty Itasha—my pink 1962 Cadillac Coupe de Ville.
Poor little HRP-4C-chan—she just can’t keep a job. First she was a receptionist, then ‘fashion model robot, and now she’s pretending to be the Vocaloid J-pop singer, Hatsune Miku, at the Ceatec electronics trade show in Chiba, Japan.
For more details…
Robo-pop
2009 Oct 6 — The Sun |News
THIS Robot's Got Talent.
The amazing humanoid can sing songs by using brilliant new electronic voice technology ...more…
You can read more info about Vocaloid Jpop singer, Hatsune Miku, on Wikipedia.
Past 3Yen reports on this HRP-4C robo-babe include:
—
Designer wedding dress for Japanese ROBOTS
—
Revisiting Japan’s ‘Uncanny Valley’
—
Japan gets to the point—Introduces ‘fashion model robot’ without clothes
Now this is perfect gift for the Japanese otaku/perv– a wallet made of schoolgirl “bloomers” (gym suit bottoms).
The Japanese Akiba blog describes them (machine translation) in the following breathless prose: “Romance for a man is new lifestyle product–a cute item of the palm size that is simple and is full of beautilities of an elegant design…just the thing to show it off your friends and the workplace.” The perv-wallet is packaged with its related “Strawberries” manga as though it is a special edition comic.
Japanese wankers buy these burusera/bloomers (Wiki) for their fantasy romances with pre-high-school girls. Eew.
Last week Japan had their Home Care & Rehabilitation Exhibition in Tokyo. This Japanesque Rube Goldberg device was featured on the always informative Japanprobe.com.
HOWEVER, right now as a wheelchair user*, I find Toyota is being a bit disingenuous about this “robotic” roof rack for wheelchairs.
- The concept of roof rack for wheelchairs has been around since the 1960s—It’s a mostly forgotten, dead-end design that is hated by users for being cumbersome and prone to jamming (the handicapped user has no way to stand up and unjam the device)
- This roof rack requires an X-folding type of wheelchair, which are old-fashioned and heavy (3-8 kg heavier). Modern wheelchairs fold flat after popping the wheels off (quick release hubs) and would not work this roof rack system.
- Independent wheelchair users prefer to roll up as fast as possible to the driver’s door, fling themselves in the driver’s seat, pop the wheels off the chair, and throw wheels and collapsed chair into the front passenger’s seat and foot-well. My best time is 20 seconds. More severely disabled wheelchair users use a van with a wheelchair lift. Nobody wants that Toyota roof rack system (which looks like an OEM or a copy of the failed roof rack systems from the States and UK).
- The best car “wheelchair system” in Japan is no system at all–Just a standard Honda Odyssey with the mainstream options for a power sliding door, a few of the passenger seats removed and 180 degree swiveling driver’s seat.
- The Toyota Prius (aerodynamic drag of cd 0.26) with that huge roof rack added would create enough drag to eliminate the advantage of having a hybrid drive-train. Prius owners have had their mileage drop from 47 to 36 mpg (US) with one kayak on top and this roof rack is wider and less aerodynamically shaped than a kayak.
* I have been in a wheelchair since mid June
with a mega-farkqued broken leg, and I spent
couple years in a wheelchair in my college days
due to paralysis caused by a rappelling injury.
Also refer to the related 3Yen report on the handicapped—The mysterious “Blue Shamrock” car sticker that means the Japanese driver is handicapped by too much Irish whiskey. ;-)
The 3Yen contributor, “ECM,” sent in this only-in-Japan behavior of Japanese robber calls police to confess while still in front of the convenience store he attempted to rob.
As “ECM writes, “in the USA he’d have pistol-whipped the woman and made off with the loot.”
Robber calls police to confess crime
October 2, 2009 — smh.com.au…..Takashi Owada, a 54-year-old unemployed man, demanded money from the 59-year-old female cashier at a convenience store in the northern city of Fukushima on Tuesday, a police spokesman said.
But she told him: “Don't be silly!”
Owada immediately changed his mind and said: “I'm sorry.”He called the police at the store exit with his own mobile telephone…more…
Such politeness sounds crazy but in Japan most criminals know that self-refection and confession automatically reduces the sentence of a crime by 50 to 80%….in a country with a conviction rate is 98%.
Here’s an outfit by Japanese designer Dai Fujiwara for Issey Miyake fashion house that sadly I am sure to see many times on the streets of Tokyo in the coming months, meh.
via Yahoo! News Photos Oct. 2, 2009.
- 
