Tag: Japanese
Can't find a taxi? Get a Smart Car out of a vending machine instead
Photographed in Tokyo’s Shibuya Station is this awesome oddity – a vending machine for the virtually disposable little Smart Car. You may select a convertible or hard-topped model, depending on how flash you’re feeling.
Then you can drive off looking very silly indeed.
Obviously it’s not real. You won’t get a car out of it – just some promotional…
Tokyo Flash dazzles us yet again with the Scramble and Progression watches
Being a fan of Tokyo Flash’s awesome otaku cred, I couldn’t resist showing you these two new designs from the Japanese wrist-lovers’ new series for Summer, Nekura.
Scramble, the left design, lets you choose the LED colour you prefer, with blue, green, cyan, red, pink or orange all on offer, but that doesn’t mean you have to say goodbye to all the other shades, as it still rotates them occasionally. The twelve outside blocks indicate the hour, with the eleven inner blocks…
Inevitable newsflash: Pioneer announces end of production of Plasma panels
Pioneer has gone and announced exactly what everyone’s been expecting for the last month or more – that production of their Plasma screens will be ceased, with third-party (likely Matsushita) panels being rebranded for their Kuro range.
According to a news release from Pioneer this morning, “we have judged that maintaining the cost competitiveness of plasma display panels at projected sales volumes will be difficult going forward. Accordingly, we have decided to terminate in-house plasma display panel production and to procure these panels externally, after panel production for our next series of models is complete.”
To reduce the amount of job losses…
Every Dreamcast game ever made up for auction – it is your duty to enter the bidding war
Hopefully it isn’t necessary to explain to you the significance of SEGA’s Dreamcast. It was the best console ever, especially as Electronic Arts didn’t release any games for it so there was no FIFA/Madden/NHL to trudge through every year – just 100% SOLID GOLD SEGA and SEGA-approved arcade magic.
Anyway. One man has acquired an original copy of every Japanese Dreamcast game ever released. Which, to be fair, most gamers should’ve done themselves during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
But if you didn’t do your duty at the time – and therefore inadvertently contributed towards today’s dismal gaming scene – you can now make amends by buying every Japanese DC game in one bulk lot – for the never-to-be-repeated bargain price of $19,999.99.
Salubrion Enso Clock: meditative timepiece
The Salubrion Enso Clock could be great for anyone who finds time to meditate or practice yoga, though I expect it could also be used in any situation where you want to time something on an alarm without being blasted…
Japanese art Chindogu – taking pieces of technology and making them 'inconvenient'
I’ve stumbled across the Japanese artform of Chindogu, which directly translates to ‘unusual tools’, devices which aim on making life easier, but just end up being more inconvenient.
The inventor, Kenji Kawakami, has created ‘inconveniences’ such as an electric fork, a toilet roll dispenser hat for people with “serious sniffles” and double-sided shoes, which are all shown under the jump.
Wonder if LG took inspiration from Kawakami when they designed the MP3 player washing machine?
Forget Pokemon, gotta collect all these Kaomoji-kun!
We’ve just been alerted to a new Japanese trend! Culture vultures and Western World otaku, take note!
The above little toy-things are called Kaomoji-kun, whose faces are made from Shift-JIS/ascii/emoticon style characters. There are various…
Gundam phone! Gundam phone! Gundam phone! Gundam phone!
I just saw this over on Wired and new IO9 contributor Lisa’s blog, Tokyo Mango, and thought of you. Yes, all of you!
It’s a Gundam mobile phone, complete…
Dancing With The Stars Robots: Japanese robot teaches traditional dancing
What a cool ‘bot. Not only does it have a super-kawaii Cath Kidston-like kimono, but it’s educational to boot.
Kids in Tokyo have been receiving dance lessons from the 35cm tall robots…
Sorry, pervert: Anti-groping mobile phone application now available in Japan
Bless Google Images, and the accurate images which pop up when you search for the word ‘groping’. Good thing I had the safety filter on, eh?
Japanese women are apparently going mad for a new application available for download on mobile handsets over there. The ‘Anti-Groping Appli’ flashes various messages up on mobiles, such as ‘Excuse me, did you just grope me?’, ‘Groping is a crime’, and finally ‘Shall we head to the police?’ It’s currently sitting at number seven on this week’s top 10 list of mobile applications over there, with groping of innocent women on public transport an increasingly huge problem.
I have my doubts over whether such an application could work here in Britain or not. Imagine riding the tube late at night, when some drunkard fondles your boob. Would you really consider whipping…
