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!

Traffic patterns on Omotesando boulevard

Why is there so much traffic coming this way and so little traffic going that way?

Cool new concept for bicycle pit stops

Check out this ingenious concept for bicycle pit stop areas by Tokyo's Store Muu Design Studio. Basically, anybody riding a bike could just ride straight into one of these tables, which locks the front wheel and provides them with an instant table to rest or snack on. The cyclist can stay on his/her seat and just have a regular seated meal. Japan has tons of bicycles, and parking them has become harder and harder as the crackdown on randomly parked bicycles continues. So this is a great solution for those who need to stop for a bite but don't want to get their bikes confiscated. I can totally see a fast food chain or restaurant wanting to install these, but I can also see it causing huge clusterfucks on sidewalks and promptly being banned.

via Shibuya246

Related stories:
Bicycle rule crackdown!
Video: the hen that rides a bicycle
Giant subterranean bicycle parking lot
Gallery of pimped out dekochari bicycles

Trains that run dangerously close to humans

I feel really bad for the person in Japan who lives in this house. A reporter from Daily Portal Z took this pic from the train while on a quest to find places where the train runs dangerously close to human habitation.

Link

BMW decked out in anime

If you want your car to have serious cred among otaku, then turn it into an itasha. It's exactly what it looks like—a car decked out in manga, anime, and video game art, removable (thank god) and often depicting cutsey 2D girls. This one has the animated vocaloid Hatsune Miku all over it, and doubles as a major publicity stint for Crypton, Nico Nico Douga, Good Smile, and I guess for BMW too.

Valentines Day van celebrates porn star Billy Herrington

Happy Valentine's Gay! I saw this van parked on the main street in Akiba today. Billy = Billy Herrington, a gay male porn star from New York who has become a huge web meme on Nico Nico Douga. He even made a special appearance in Akiba today, at an event sponsored by a major figurine manufacturer!

River flooding could cause Tokyo subway system apocalypse

A recent study conducted by the government's disaster management council found that a flooding of the Arakawa River could cause an apocalypse of the meticulously interwoven Tokyo subway system. Every 200 years or so, it rains over 550 millimeters a year; if this ever happens again, the heavily dammed river could flood, causing 97 subway stations in the city to be destroyed. It would start with just a few stations, but then the subway tunnels would function as pipes and bring the water damage from one station to the next, destroying close to 100 within days. Needless to say, government officials are now hard at work trying to figure out how to make sure this doesn't happen.

Link (Thanks, Vagrant!)

Photos of crazy commuter train rush in Tokyo

Tony McNicol sez:

credit crunch? commuter crush!

He took this and other great photos of rush hour human train traffic in Tokyo, found here.

Gallery of pimped out "dekochari" bicycles

Apparently, there is a subculture in Japan where young boys dress up their bicycles with steel boxes and horns and motors and bling so they look like delivery trucks in India. It's called dekochari, and Tony McNichol has a great photo gallery of them on his web site. I think this is the boy version of purikura—a way to show comraderie, creativity, and personal taste.

Crystal-studded Mercedes vs lightweight bamboo electric car

Two very extreme rides made their debut this weekend in western Japan. On the left is the $400K Swarovski crystal SL600. It has 300,000 pieces of bling on its exterior, and it's on display at a department store in Osaka. What do you think? I think I might get blinded if I look straight at it. On the right is BamGoo, a single-seater bamboo electric vehicle developed in Kyoto. It weights just 130 lbs and can drive up to 30 miles on a single charge. Not very impressive from a driving standpoint, but at least you won't be spending lots of money on gas.

Which would you rather be driving? I'm gonna go with BamGoo. I think I'd just be way too embarassed in that Mercedes. The bamboo car is just silly.

Toyota's New Hybrid X Concept Car

Toyota just unveiled its new Hybrid X concept car. It looks like a Prius from the future, and has an internal interface that controls lighting, music and smell. Yep, smell. It has a perfume diffuser so you don't have to hang those silly tree-shaped smelly things from your rear-view mirror. Read more about it here.

 

Nissan: Advertising on Second Life Is Better Than Real Life

According to the head of web advertising at Nissan, putting ads up in Second Life is better than doing so in real life. "We don't know if it's actually translating into sales," the guy says. "But the cost-effectiveness is very high."

Okay, sorry to break your bubble, but I highly doubt that these SL-ers are buying Nissan Versas. MMORPGers rarely leave the house.

Linden Lab, the company behind the popular sex-crazed massive online role playing game, announced the debut of their Japanese version, which will be available soon.

 

Link (Japanese)

Car Laptop Holder

Some people get anxious just spending a few minutes away from the Internet, but they're not cool enough to own Blackberry's. For people like this, there's Thanko's car laptop holder. It has a sturdy, 360-degree rotating arm and latches easily onto the little nob that bolts down the driver's seat.

I don't really understand why talking on your cell phone while driving can get you a ticket, yet a product like this is completely acceptable. But whatever. You could also use it to hold maps, or you can detach the table and screw in a camera for sneak shots of the hot woman driving a Ferrari next to you.

Product page (Japanese)

This Car Can Never Park Here

Remember how I told you about Japan being a scolding culture? Well, it's not just young girls that get in trouble--cars do, too. For example, this car is NEVER allowed to park in this parking lot. The lot managers even put up a giant poster with a picture of the car and the license plate number on the pay machine with a giant warning in red that says: "This car is NEVER allowed to park in this parking lot because it didn't pay!"

Gasoline From The Sky

People are always asking me if it's true that gasoline comes from the sky in Japan. Yes, it is, they come out of those pumps hanging from the ceiling light, which advertises regular or high-octane gas. And you don't have to do a thing at the gas station, either, cuz the guys in red do it all for you--fill up your tank, wipe your mirrors, squeegee your windows, and stop oncoming traffic to direct you out of the gas station.

Electric car that looks like a beetle.

Students at the auto tech department of an Okayama high school created an electric car that looks just like a South American beetle called the Dynastes hercules--the biggest in the world.

I wonder what's next. A bike that looks like a praying mantis, maybe? Did you know that a female praying mantis has to eat the male praying mantis' head before mating? I learned that in a college biology class from a happy old professor who hopped around the room role-playing to demonstrate.

At Toyota , strippers and human heads add an intimate touch.

With human heads and hands personifying the features & amenities, this new advertising campaign by Toyota portrays the idea that its products and services are customized for you, making you feel as though someone is attending to you at all times. It's creative and funny. But when the campaign--dubbed "human touch"--comes out at the same time as news of the company's internal "personal touch" policies, the definition of intimacy with the automaker becomes a little bit sketchier.

Personal touch is a decades-old internal labor policy in which strippers are invited to company meetings to help managers and staffers let loose and bond. Word of the widespread use of this policy got out this week when nine Toyota Motor Philippines employees were reprimanded for exploiting it. According to one:

Strip shows are part and parcel of wining and dining during personal touch meetings. Workers have a lottery to see who gets to sleep with the stripper and some employees have actually done the deed.

So then the question is, would you rather be a customer receiving Toyota's human touch, or an employee receiving its personal touch?

I drive an Acura.

Today, Toyota announced their plan to take over the world. They plan to sell 9.8 million cars in 2008, which would put them ahead of GM. Japan on top of the US! Unthinkable, unless you're talking about the number of professional perverts there are. (Maybe.)

The main reason for Toyota's recent success and global dominance ambitions is the Prius, which has kicked ass against high gas prices. But those of us who have seen the ominous South park episode--where the "smug" from Prius owners destroys San Francisco--might opt for this oh so good looking Lexus LS460, introduced two days ago.