TOKYOMANGO

Razor beauty campaign by Philips offers "mustache" diamond as a prize

Philips Japan is having a really strange promotional campaign right now — they're offering one lucky male user of a Philips shaving system a 0.3-carat diamond made out of his own mustache. Here's how the campaign works:

1. Go to the campaign's Mustache Beauty Queen web site and choose your favorite out of the 20 candidates for Mustache-Shaving Queen. When your mouse rolls over each girl, you can see her shaving her mustache. Yes, it's sexy and fun! You should check out the site even if you're not planning to enter.

2. Vote on one beauty queen you like by sending a postcard to the campaign address.

3. Once all votes are in, a queen is chosen. From those who voted for that queen, one lucky person will win the Mustache Diamond.

4. Philips reps will go to the winner's house and take videos of the person shaving off his (or her) mustache. They'll then use the carbon from the stubble to create an artificial diamond and present it to the winner in a special ceremony.

You can vote until Jan 11, 2010.

Campaign main page (Japanese, via Impress Watch)

USB heated eyelash curler

Like to retouch your makeup at work? The TouchBeauty is a USB-powered heated eyelash curler. I don't really understand the utility of this — wouldn't you rather have a battery-operated one that you can carry around with you for touch-ups everywhere? — but if you want it, you can buy one for about $20 at the Thanko Store.

Product page (Japanese)

Mysterious suicide and missing bull semen

This sounds like the beginning of a really bad mystery novel. 1,300 tubes of bull semen have disappeared and one man who worked at the beef promotion committee responsible for said tubes was found hanged in an apparent suicide. There's a one-page news story on Mainichi about this, but it really doesn't say much else.

Video: Man married his Nintendo DS girlfriend

On Boing Boing today, I scripted and narrated a BBVideo episode about the man who married his Love Plus girlfriend in an official-looking ceremony on Sunday:

On Sunday, a man named Sal9000 married the love of his life. Her name is Nene Anegasaki, and she lives inside of a Nintendo DS video game called Love Plus. The wedding took place during a Make: Japan meet-up held at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. In attendance were a live audience, an MC, the bride's virtual video game girlfriend — who made a speech — and a real human priest.

Link

Video: Wired staffers dancing the Uma Uma

I don't know if I ever posted this video on TokyoMango — while readying my Wired Mag article about Hiroyuki Nishimura and Nico Nico Douga for publication in early 2008, a bunch of Wired staffers got together in the office kitchen in San Francisco and danced the Uma Uma. Then, we uploaded the video onto Nico Nico Douga and watched as comments filled the screen. Some people made fun of us for being old, or American, or both; some wondered whether we had real work to do; some just "sang" along.

Watching this makes me happy and nostalgic for my Wired days. By the way, stay tuned for an imminent video story on Boing Boing about showcasing one guy's latest stunt on Nico Nico Douga.