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Bandai has a new toy called Mojibakeru — a series of transformer toys shaped like animals that can be turned into the shape of the kanji that spells that animal's name. Pictured here a dog, tiger, fish, horse, bird, and dragon.
via Pink Tentacle
In this video, a very serious lady from the company Unicharm shows us how to insert a tampon the right way. It might seem strange, but in Japan a lot of women still don't use tampons because they don't want to put things inside their bodies. Charm Soft is the leading tampon brand in Japan.
via Zaeega (Japanese)
This really cute ad for Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker features a little boy in a cardboard box.
Designer Hideo Kanbara thought it would be fun to make hiragana in 3D. Here is あ (the "a" sound). Beautiful!
Link via Spoon and Tamago
One of my favorite thinkers on Japanese modern culture, Morinosuke Kawaguchi gave a talk at TEDxTokyo this past weekend. You may remember him from my ETech presentation last year, where he talked about the manner mode pen. You can see his Toilet Talk here — a must-see!
In 2008, Chronicle published my book: Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan.
I am also the founder of The Tofu Project, a boutique program that helps Japanese entrepreneurs and creators think deeper, tell better stories, and go out into the world in a much bigger way. We work with companies like Mixi, Japan Airlines, and Salesforce.com.
Sometimes I try to explain Japanese culture on CNN, BBC, CBC, WSJ, ABC (so many acronyms!) or in person at places like the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, ETech, and Ignite!
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Send tips to mango [at] tokyomango [dot] com
