TOKYOMANGO

Get your hand-printed limited edition TokyoMango t-shirt now (2 weeks only)

My friend Ben and I made a test run of TokyoMango t-shirts on Saturday. They're really nice, do you want one? If so, you can buy one here. Below are the details:

- All shirts are 100% cotton.
- Each t-shirt will be hand-silk screened by me and Ben on his Yudu machine. The shirt logo was custom-designed by Ben. Mango design courtesy of my web designer James.
- The Women's tees come in a t-shirt style (pistacio and white) and a spaghetti strap ribbed tank (yellow).
- The Men's tees come in orange and white. In the pic above, Ben is actually accidentally wearing a girl's tee, but you get the idea... the sleeves will be more manly on the one you get.
- You can choose a custom colored tee for $25. Just shoot me an email with your preference after you place the order.
- The sizes tend to run a little big (except for the tanktops). They might shrink in the wash.
- Some of you will receive a free surprise Japanese toy or gadget with your t-shirt! I'm just gonna randomly stick them into bags, so keep an eye out.
- We're taking orders over the next two weeks only, at least for this first printing. They'll ship at the end of those two weeks, when Ben & I will silkscreen them by hand.
- Last day to order is Monday, October 5th.

UPDATE: T-shirts are no longer for sale. Maybe we'll do another round sometime!

Kitten paw keychain meows when you push it

I love playing with paws. They're so soft and cushy. This keychain looks like a kitten paw, and it's cushy. Also, when you press it, it meows.

Buy it here.

In the Realm of the Senses, a film based on a true story about sexual obsession

In the Realm of the Senses is a 1976 movie directed by acclaimed director Nagisa Oshima about sexual obsession gone awry. I watched it on Friday night, and can safely say that I have never seen anything like it. 90% of the footage is sex scenes, but it looks more like Edo period erotica art than porn &mdash beautiful, fleshy scenes of a man and a woman (and sometimes, a man and women) exploring their sexuality on tatami mat floors with their kimonos strewn all over the room. It's set in the 1930s, when prostitution was legal and geishas were commonplace. Sada, the female protagonist, is a prostitute-turned-maid who she gets involved in a lusty affair with the charismatic master of the hotel she works at. They have sex all day and all night, and Sada quickly develops a serious obsession with Kichi's penis. Sounds like campy porn, but the actual film is nothing of the sort &mdash it's a true story told in a really beautiful artsy sexy way. Oshima takes us on a journey through their affair that is so provocative that the film had to be produced in France, was once banned from the NY Film Festival, and to this day is censored in Japan*. The Criterion Collection just released a fully uncensored version of the film with extras, though, and that's available all over the Internet. (Warning: Spoilers ahead! If you want to stop reading now and just watch the movie, you can get the Criterion collection DVD on Amazon.)

Child actor Yumi Adachi's mom to debut as a porn star at age 51

Everyone, meet Yuri Adachi. She is a new porn star &mdash her first DVD comes out in July. Apparently, the 51-year old spend $60,000 getting full body cosmetic surgery and increasing her bust size by 3cm to get ready for her big debut.

The most interesting thing about Yuri Adachi is that she is the mother of Yumi Adachi, one of the first and most famous child actors in Japan. Yumi Adachi debuted in 1993 at the age of 11 as a pop singer, and then became really really famous after starring in a drama about an orphan a year later. Actually, scratch that. Yumi Adachi made her debut at the age of zero, when she started modeling for baby magazines.

So now everyone in Japan is gossiping about how screwy the parents of child actors must be to want to have their kid in the spotlight from such an innocuous age &mdash Yuri Adachi has quickly become the epitome of that bad parent. I bet all the hype will drive a lot of people to watch her porn though.

Wallet is for nerds who love Hello Kitty

This is cute, not in the conventional pink frilly Hello Kitty way, but in a much more nerdy retro Hello Kitty way. You still have to like Hello Kitty to carry it around, but if you've been a closet fan and are more of a black-and-white type of person than a pink person, this could work for you.

Link

Toilet paper has horror story by the author of Ring printed on it

Are you the type of person who likes to read while pooping? A new type of Japanese toilet paper has horror stories printed on it, a 9-chapter novella by Koji Suzuki, the author of Ring. The story printed on paper is aptly called Drop, and costs just $2 a roll. Hey, that's cheaper than buying a paperback! In Japan (and in Harry Potter), we believe that ghosts hide in toilets. So this is super scary, especially because the guy who wrote the Ring is like the country's horror master. Printed toilet paper, however, is nothing new &mdash we used to have it when we were kids. That's how I learned kanji.

Link

Video: Luigi unleashes his frustrations at Mario

OMG this is hilarious. Luigi unleashes his frustrations about always getting the short end of the stick, and starts whining about it to Mario mid-game. I love Mario, but this video made me love Luigi just a little bit more. Poor baby brother!

College Humor via Laughing Squid via @ErikMalinowski

Shiso-flavored Pepsi sounds delicious

The newest Japanese flavor of Pepsi is shiso, or plum leaf. I'm actually willing to bet that it tastes pretty good. If anyone has tried it, please report back.

via Japan Probe

Daikichi Amano's Japanese horror photography

Daikichi Amano is a wonderfully talented photographer who takes horror portraits of Japanese people.

Daikichi Amano main page via Pink Tentacle

Ronald Takaki, prominent ethnic scholar, is dead

Ronald Takaki, a Japanese-American historian and ethnographer from Hawaii, died yesterday at the age of 70. He was a huge advocate of racial equality, and played a big role in fighting things like the model minority stereotype for Asians, but also, he was the first person to ever teach a class on black history in the UC system. He wrote interesting books well worth reading, like A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America and Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb. UC Berkeley plans to publish a full obit tomorrow, but I just wanted to put up a quick post about it. May he rest in peace.

Link

Toy simulates sound of cracking knuckles

This funny little gadget is actually a dual-purpose stress relieving device &mdash when you bend it, it simulates the sound of cracking knuckles. And if you keep it straight, it can be used to push pressure points. It's $5.

via Tokyu Hands

Maid-themed lap pillow for pervs who like frilly skirts

In Akihabara, they have these establishments where men can walk in and get their ears cleaned and scratched by girls dressed in maid outfits. Otaku love it because they get to put their head on the maids' laps. So it naturally follows that a product like this maid lap pillow exists. The lap pillow has been around for awhile, but this is the first time I've ever seen the maid-themed one.

Product page via Japanator

Akihabara station sign for your desktop

Wish you lived in Akihabara instead of your mom's basement in bumblefuck nowhere? Now you can have your very own desktop-sized, backlit Akiba station sign in your room. It's for sale for about $10 at major electronics stores in Tokyo.

via Impress (Japanese)

Two recent fears: swine flu and North Korea

The news in Japan these days has been veering in the direction of scared. For one thing, swine flu has Japanese people canceling trips to Mexico and even California after some people who deplaned a San Francisco-Tokyo flight were diagnosed with swine flu. Pharmacies are selling out of face masks, and everyone is talking about it. My mom called yesterday and asked if the US is struck with the same fear as they are in Tokyo. I told her I don't know.

Second, North Korea's back at it again with its nuclear testing and Japan-hating on its news site, brandishing headlines like "KCNA Report on One More Successful Underground Nuclear Test" next to headlines like "Japan Can Never Evade Responsibility for Its Past Crimes against Humanity."

I wonder which is more likely to happen, a major swine flu outbreak or a North Korean nuclear attack. I'm gonna vote for neither.

The Cat in the Coffin, a crazy story by one of Japan's greatest female mystery novelists

I finally took some time off this weekend to read. I recently got a short translated mystery novel called The Cat in the Coffin, which I finished in about an hour. It's a quick read, and it was also one of the best mystery novel build-ups I've ever read.

The author is Mariko Koike, an award-winning, well-respected female mystery writer in Japan. The book is a flashback, a story told in the future by a lady reminiscing about an experience she had when she was in her early twenties. She was a live-in tutor for a little 9-year old girl who belonged to a widower, a good-looking, charismatic Great Gatsby-like artist named Goro. For the first half of the book, it's a cute story about the little girl with her cat and the tutor with her secret crush on the dad. And then Koike starts dropping hints at the totally unpredictable crazy ending to come.

Like most human beings, I have a dark and evil side. I am a person who could witness something truly terrible and go on living as if nothing had happened. I could put the desire for atonement out of my mind, if that seemed to be in my own best interest. And I was capable of rationalizing the most horrific reality, if that was what I needed to do in order to go on living.

I thought the way Koike set up the story was really interesting. Some mystery novels blatantly drop clues early on to get the blood rushing, but she doesn't do this until the end. Instead, her hints are placed gently within the smooth narrative and then suddenly, right before the ball drops, you realize that this was coming all along. I was reading it late at night and saying to myself, oh holy shit wow. The quote above, for example, doesn't show up until the very end.

The English translation was just published &mdash it's a great book for the beach or a lazy afternoon on the couch.

The Cat in the Coffin by Mariko Koike

Big Dreams Little Tokyo: a quirky movie about Japanophiles

I just watched a pretty hilarious indie movie called Big Dreams Little Tokyo, directed by David Boyle. It's about this white guy, Boyd (played by Boyle) who is obsessed with Japanese culture. Like, really obsessed. He has a sign outside his apartment door that says: "Japanese only" and all the furniture in it is labeled in hiragana. He traipses around town handing out business cards the proper Japanese way, telling people &mdash only Japanese or Japanese-looking people &mdash that he is a businessman. His roommate is a Japanese-American wannabe sumo wrestler Jerome (played by Jayson Watabe, who went to my high school) who sits in a fundoshi and eats all day.

Boyd's having no luck selling his silly language book and lessons, but things start to turn around when Jerome overeats at a local sushi restaurant and the duo take on two new friends &mdash the Mexican-American sushi chef and a pretty Japanese nurse at the hospital.

Boyle made this movie with pretty much no directing experience, and Watabe is his best friend, not necessarily an actor. But I feel like that almost worked to their advantage. The result is a very natural, slightly Rushmore-esque film that resonates with anyone who lives in between two cultures, whether it's real or just in their minds.

Buy Big Dreams, Little Tokyo on Amazon

University hands out iPhones to prevent students from ditching class

Tokyo's Aoyama Gakuin University handed out free iPhones to all the staff and students at its School of Social Informatics &mdash not just to be nice, but to use the GPS function to make sure nobody's ditching class. The system will be in full force by fall semester, when instructors will also start asking for homework and tests via iPhone. It's part of provider Softbank's web education training initiative, so the students aren't being charged for any of it.

Link

On BBG: Coffee in a can is big in Japan

On BBG today, I wrote about coffee in a can which, as far as I can tell, is largely a Japanese phenomenon disguised as a manly American one.

When I was a teenager in Tokyo, I used to drink coffee all the time — from a can, from a vending machine, often at the train station on my way home from school. In went a 100 yen coin, and out came a piping hot 250 ml can of delicious brew, pre-mixed with cream and sugar. Coffee in a can is everywhere in Japan, and when I moved to the US, I wondered why it's not as prevalent here. Why? It's so much more convenient and cheaper than searching for a Starbucks.

Read: Coffee in a can from a vending machine is big (and manly) in Japan

Venn diagram showing Japan's relationship with karaoke

1971, by Tan Nuyen (Thanks, Steven!)

Get the cell phone strap for people who like opening beers

In March, I wrote a post about the Mugen Beer Pull, Bandai's new keychain/cell phone strap toy that lets you mimic the sensation of opening a can of beer whenever you want. A lot of you asked where you can buy one, and I finally found out where you can buy it online for $12.

Buy the mugen beer pull here. (Thanks, Mark F!)

Life-sized, moving Gundam on display in Odaiba this summer

This summer marks the 30th anniversary of Mobile Suit Gundam. To celebrate, a full-sized Gundam &mdash yes, all 18 meters and 35 tons of him &mdash is being built in a park in Odaiba. Yes, this means that if you go to Tokyo this summer between July 11 and August 31, you'll probably see him towering over the city as you drive across the Rainbow Bridge on your way to the city from Narita.

This Gundam's not just a stationary statue, either. He's going to be able to move his head and emit light and mist from different parts of his body. Awesome.

Link

Keychain features naughty gorilla toy (NSFW)

My friend A.J. found a toy called the Interesting Gorilla Keychain on display at Donki. Five bucks for a wind-up masturbating gorilla toy! Not bad, right?

Pepper mill sprinkles brown specks from R2D2's butt

For $20, you can get this awesome little pepper mill shaped like R2D2, in either white and blue or black and red. You twist his head, and pepper sprinkles out of his butt like poop.

Get it here.

Japanese astronaut shows off his flying carpet

Astronaut Koichi Wakata is having fun in space and keeping his fellow citizens on earth entertained by doing stuff like, flying on a magic carpet.

via Engadget

Human-sized, remote-controlled Tachikoma with a cockpit

Cool! A human-sized Tachikoma that you can sit inside and control via remote.

Link

Keith Haring museum at the foot of a volcano

Did you know there's a Keith Haring museum at the foothills of a volcano in Yamanashi prefecture? It's actually from the private collection of Kazuo Nakamura, the museum director. I'd like to check it out!

Nakamura Keith Haring Museum

TokyoMango in Battle of the Blogs

I got an otherwise message-less email with this image file attached to it. It appears that TokyoMango has inadvertently been placed in a battlefield against another Japan blog... the thing is, TokyoMango doesn't battle. She's a peaceful little blog that likes to just hang out on the couch and occasionally go out for some fun. If TokyoMango were a soldier, she'd be the one cooking dinner for everyone back at the barracks and saying silly things to make everyone feel better at the end of a hard day. So I don't know if she'll win this one...

But when someone pits her against another in battle, she'll never say no. Kinda like how I took my friend Ben on in a taco eat-off on Tuesday even though he's way bigger than me.

Cast your vote here.

Muscle March for Wii comes out this week

A new Wii game that debuts on 5/21 lets you pretend you're a bodybuilder, and makes you run through holes in the wall in funny muscle man poses.

ANTM finalist is Creepy-chan, a 4chan web meme

If you've ever talked television with me, you know that I'm a big fan of America's Next Top Model. Cycle 12 just ended this week, and one of the finalists was a girl named Allison Harvard. As I do with every ANTM cycle, I googled the contestants—and found out that Allison used to be a web meme on 4chan, the image bulletin board started by my buddy Moot that is notorious for anime porn. Allison used to be known as Creepy-chan, and she posted all these crazy photos of herself looking like a strange bird.

Tyra does not know this (or maybe she does) but this season, thanks to Creepy-chan, her show transcended the closet-girly-girl-guilty-pleasure audience and gave web geeks something to get excited over every week. One more really creepy photo and a photo from ANTM after the jump.

Dump the vomit here is illegality

TokyoMango reader Magnus from Germany says:

This sign was posted at the waste disposal area of a Harajuku apartment complex. I still don't quite understand what it means. Maybe your knowledge of Japanese can help decipher it?

I think it means please don't puke on or under or near this sign.

Roundup of Doraemon gadgets on BBG

On Boing Boing Gadgets, I wrote an article about some of the best Doraemon gadgets from 1970-1980 that either exist now or probably will exist soon. I heart Doraemon. Please give it a quick read!

Also, we're celebrating Asian Heritage Month on BBG so take a visit to check out all the posts.

6 gadgets of the future from Doraemon [BBG]

Tetsuwan Atomu is making his Hollywood debut

The Hollywood version of Astro Boy comes out this October. My guess is that it will be highly entertaining but that a lot of the charm of the old Tezuka series will be lost. I posted the Hollywood trailer on BBG. See it here.

Reader photo: Hell's Valley, where the hot springs lie

Photo by reader P. Lam, who says:

This picture was taken at Hell's Valley in Noboribetsu, a Hot Springs Paradise!

Beautiful nature exists in Japan, too.

Man creates moving Pac-Man with a Roomba

Fun video of a Japanese guy who created a Pac-Man out of a Roomba and 488 LED lights.

via BBG

Video: The bra that counts down to marriage

I just wrote about a new concept bra from Triumph on BBG that counts down to marriage—here's a video showing how it would work. Scary.

Seasonal designer toilet bowls from Toto

Toilet company Toto came out with this beautiful new toilet bowl collection that they call Waza Miyabi. There are foliage designs for every season. Pretty, although I personally would prefer to pee and poo in a normal white toilet bowl.

via Born Rich

Praise Salon is a web site that just says nice things about you

There's a web site called Praise Salon that is supposedly pretty popular in Japan. The intro screen asks you whether you're male or female, and then lets you choose from a menu of several occupation. It then asks you, would you like to be praised? If you click on Yes, this funny techno beat comes on and the screen starts filling up with sentences saying how awesome you are.

via Asiajin

R2D2 water bottle

This water bottle is shaped like R2D2. You drink out of it by unscrewing his head and sucking on his spine. Pretty cute accessory, and it's always important to stay hydrated. You can buy it in the US for $40 here. Even comes with a little carry strap.

Departures, best foreign film of the year, really is that good

Yojiro Takita's Departures (Japanese title is Okuribito) won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film this year, and if you watch the movie you'll instantly know why. It is a stunningly raw exploration of death—I went to a screening of it this afternoon, and was blown away by it. It's about a cello player who loses his job, moves back to his hometown, and gets a highly unusual new gig as a corpse dresser-upper.

This movie will make you think about death. It's something many of us are uncomfortable talking about. I volunteer at an AIDS hospice once a week, and the experiences I have there are constantly reshaping my perspective on it, and the way I cope. I think Takita is brave to address death so directly in a movie and also to bring dignity back to the controversial Japanese funeral system.

Masahiro Motoki (aka Mokkun), the now-45 year old former boy band star, does an amazing job in the lead, and Ryoko Hirosue is charming in her role as his wife.

Here's a video of the director and cast members receiving the Oscar, plus a clip of Takita saying, roughly, that the Japanese tend to want to avoid talking about death and that's why he wanted to see how that would play out in a movie. He also gives a special shout out to Mokkun for playing a huge role in bringing the crew together and says, half of this award belongs to him:

Departures opens in the Bay area on May 29. Be sure to buy tickets and go with someone you don't mind bawling next to. (read: Not great for a first date.)

Japan's Miss Universe rep announced (pic & video)

Japan has been kicking butt in the Miss Universe contest for the past couple of years—Riyo Mori won in 2008, Kurara Chibana was the first runner up in 2007. The 2009 candidate has some big shoes to fill. Meet her—she's Emiri Miyasaka, a 24-year old model from Shibuya. She'll be traveling to the Bahamas in August to compete against the rest of the countries,

In her finalist video (below), she compares herself to a bowl of natto—sticky and persistent in reaching her goals. Cute!

Toilet knee pads to prevent pee from splashing

This could be the greatest Japanese invention yet. It's a knee pillow for guys who like to pee standing up—now they can do it kneeling down so that their pee doesn't splash all over the place. What a great invention!

Product page (via Gizmodo)

Fred Schodt wins the Order of the Rising Sun

My friend Fred Schodt just won the Japanese government's Order of the Rising Sun. That's, like, the second most prestigious honor you can win in Japan, ever. I think it's like being knighted in the UK. Fred was a longtime friend and interpreter for Tezuka Osamu, and he predicted Japan's humanoid robot craze and the manga revolution way before anyone else in the books Inside the Robot Kingdom
and Manga! Manga! respectively.

Congrats to Fred! You deserve it.
(Total coincidence, by the way, that the last two posts on this blog just happened to mention him.)

Robot teaches elementary school class in Tokyo

The robot craze that Fred Schodt predicted in 1988 reached new heights in Tokyo last week, when a pretty humanoid went to an elementary school in Chiyoda-ku to guest teach a class. Saya—a speaking robot with 30 moving parts and a slew of facial expressions created by Tokyo University of Science professor Hiroshi Kobayashi—was there to inspire students to consider a career in science and robotics. The students thought she was pretty and that she looked just like a nice human lady.

Link

Microwaveable Cup Noodle to debut in two new soupy flavors

Two new flavors of Nissin Cup Noodle will be released on Monday, both themed after favorite western soups—minestrone and clam chowder. Yummy!(?) Also, these are microwaveable, so you don't need to boil water. Japan has microwave everything...even boiled eggs!

On BBG: My letter to JJ Abrams, and an interview with my mom

This week on BBG, I wrote an open letter to JJ Abrams about popping my Star movie virginity. I also interviewed my mom on her quirky gadget usage habits.

Read:
JJ, you popped my Star (An open letter to JJ Abrams about the new Star Trek)
My mom Mary on her video game addiction, her stupid GPS, and the gadget she wished she had

Reader photo: Hiroshima Memorial at night

Beautiful photo of the Hiroshima Memorial by reader Phil White in Cambridge, UK.

Issey Miyake's u-tsu-wa exhibit ends this weekend

21_21 Design site, the gallery designed by Issey Miyake in Tokyo Midtown, has a beautiful exhibit of bowls and vases by Viennese artist Lucie Rie called U-Tsu-Wa. It ends this Sunday, so if you want to see it, now's a good time.

Masanobu Sato wins masturbating event yet again (his secret: a sex toy sold @ Donki)

Meet the masturbating champion of the world, Mr. Masanobu Sato. He came to San Francisco this past weekend to defend his title of Longest Time Masturbating at the Center for Sex and Culture's annual event—and won yet again. Actually, Sato works for Tenga, the company that makes those canned vaginas that they sell at Donki. He and two other guys showed up with their products, proving that it either isn't so great or is really great, depending on how you look at it, I guess.

Image via SF Weekly (Thanks, Alex!)

Imaginary video games featuring Bush and a drunk guy

Offworld has a fun post about a new exhibit at game store Meteor in Tokyo, where dozens of designers imagined retro video games that were never invented. Like the one above, in which you play ex-President Bush trying to save NYC. Brandon writes:

The one game most after my one true heart is Cap's vino-red King Drunk (which appears to serve dual purpose as pun on the shop name, Meteor [Mei Tei Oh]), in which players are given several attempts to clear stages "while enjoying the state of drunkenness," and which prides itself on its "inability to control game action":

See the imaginary 8-bit games of Famicase 2009 [Offworld]

Japan's newest celebrity: Imalu

Japan's newest buzz celebrity is Imalu, the 19-year old daughter of big-time stars Sanma Akashiya and Shinobu Otake. She's kinda cute! Not much is known about her professional aspirations, but she did sign a contract with her mom's talent agency, and thinks she wants to be a singer.

Reader photo: veggie-dyed fabrics drying in the sun

Reader Katie Bechtold writes:

For me, this photo evokes the carefree feeling of a sunny day in the countryside. I took the photo outside Ōhara Kōbō, a vegetable-dye (kusaki-zome) workshop north of Kyoto. One of the happiest moments I remember from that trip was standing in the dyeing shed, stirring my fabric around in a warm pot of Pagoda Tree dye, inhaling the scent of woodsmoke, looking out the window at the countryside.