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!

Home bath bomb making machine

There's a new toy coming out at the end of this month that I kinda want. It's a bath bomb maker — you know, those big balls of fizzy aromatic goodness for your bathtub that they sell at Lush. The main ingredients in bath bombs are baking soda and citric acid; so basically all you have to do is add your favorite relaxing smells — herbs, rose petals, essential oils — and some water, put all the ingredients in the ball, stir it and compress it, and out pops a perfect bath ball. If only I had a bigger bath tub at home, I would totally use it all the time. It's a fun craft project and great for producing homemade gifts. The kit costs about $40 and comes with enough baking soda and citric acid to get a project started.

Product page (Japanese, via Impress Watch)

Aiiku hospital no longer offers perinatal care

I just found out that the hospital I was born at, Tokyo's Aiiku Hospital, just delisted itself from the official registry of perinatal clinics because they don't have enough doctors. Sad! The hospital, whose name Aiiku is a combination of the kanji for "love" and "grow," is the first of what could be many to delist because it couldn't solve the problem of understaffed, overworked doctors. (If you're listed, it apparently means you have special equipment for dealing with complicated pregnancies.) The hospital was founded in 1938; it's where Princess Kiko gave birth to her baby prince in 2006.

Link

67 patients get eye infections from laser surgery in Ginza

I've been thinking about getting Lasik for a while now, but yikes. This news makes me think twice. Dozens of patients who got laser eye surgery in a Ginza clinic are suffering from corneal inflammation and conjunctivitis after the clinic allegedly used a dirty steam cleaner to disinfect the devices that slice the surface of people's eyeballs. The clinic was aware of these problems, but they didn't tell health officials; instead they got a replacement disinfection device and hoped it would slide. For shame, Ginza clinic!

Link

Woman injected with wrong egg has abortion, sues hospital

A twenty-something year old Kagawa woman who had in-vitro fertilization found out mid-pregnancy that the hospital had injected her with the wrong egg--i.e. someone else's baby. Apparently, the hospital accidentally used a left-over egg from a previous operation, found out later, and told her. She had an abortion and sued the Kagawa government, which administers the hospital, for 20 million yen. IVF is pretty common in Japan, but adoption, surrogate births, and most other ways in which you may bear someone else's kid are not so accepted. Abortion, on the other hand, was once (not sure if it still is) the number two method of birth control.

Link (Thanks, Walter!)

Many Japanese die in ambulances because of strange policy

A 69-year old Tokyo man died two weeks ago because of a huge glitch in the Japanese ambulatory system. Somebody was just telling me about this recently. In Japan, if you call an ambulance, they then in turn have to call around to neighboring hospitals to see if the doctors in the emergency room have time to see another patient. As it goes, emergency rooms are often pretty busy and a lot of them say no. On this particular night, 14 hospitals said they were too busy and refused to take the ambulance in. The guy died 90 minutes after he was hit by a motorcycle. Most of those 90 minutes were spent in the ambulance, even though paramedics were at his side within minutes. He had severe head and back injuries and lost too much blood.

More than 14,000 emergency patients were rejected from hospitals three or more times in 2007. The record is a woman in her 70s who was having trouble breathing. She was denied entry by 49 hospitals. WTF?? One pregnant woman died in 2006 from a brain hemorrhage during childbirth because she was rejected by 19 hospitals.

Note to self: If ever in an emergency situation in Japan, don't call an ambulance. Call a cab instead, because if you show up at the door instead of succumbing to the courtesy system of the ambulances, they'll have to see you.

Link (Thanks, Walter!)

Hand lotion so cute it makes you want to become friends

Japanese drug stores have more beauty products than any Walgreens, Longs, or CVS, but one thing that always baffles me is the complete absence of locally made body lotion. Yes, there are a gazillion types of face cream and hand cream. But body lotion is always imported—it's so strange! I had to special order my favorite Japanese one, which is made out of rice. Speaking of lotion, I found these super cute "We are friends" Hand Cream. The idea behind it is that the containers are so frigging cute that you can't help but become friends with the creepy guy in the cube next to yours if he has one too.

Vending Machines Tell You How Old You Look

One of the wonderful things about Japan is that anybody can buy cigarettes from a vending machine. Even a 10 year old. But recently, some vending machine companies have started to implement face recognition technology that would guess the buyer's age based o the size of their facial features and bone structure and then decide if they were underage or not. The government just announced its approval of this method for nationwide use.

The crackdown on cigarette purchases by minors began with the Taspo Card, a card you have to have in order to buy smokes from a machine. Hasn't been universalized yet, but that's the plan. It serves the same purpose as a driver's license when you show ID at a smoke shop in the US.

I wonder how accurate the face recognition tech is though. It would suck if you're just young-looking or have really small bones. And I have definitely seen some 12 year olds with bigger heads than their parents.

Link

 

Machine Measures Belly Fat While You Lie Down

In February, Tanita will start selling this revolutionary body fat percentage checker that doesn't even require you to get up. All you have to do is lie under it for a while.

via Impress Watch (Japanese)

Yunker Kicks Colds, Numbs Taste Buds

 

Last week, I caught a cold. It was going around. So I took off early from work, put on an extra layer, and proceeded to hibernate. I spent a lot of time making chicken soup, rice porridge, and ginger honey tea. I brought my laptop and blanket to the couch so I could veg out and occasionally check in at work.

Everyone has their own idea of what the best remedy for a common cold is. My friend Kayoko, a doctor, recommends Yunker. Go to your Japanese supermarket, she said, and buy a bottle of Yunker, or Zena, or one of those other Japanese energy drinks. Chug it and go to sleep.

So I went out and bought this Yunker 3-pack for $14 (it even came with a free Sato-chan elephant cell phone strap).

The main ingredients in Yunker are water, sugar, and alcohol, and it's infused with things like royal jelly, Asian ginseng, riboflavin, and hawthorn berry extract. And it tastes like crap. Not the kind of crap that makes you nauseous, but more like a really strong shot of spicy-sweet liqueur.

I don't know if it was the Yunker or the strain of cold I had this time around, but I completely healed two days later.

Takara Tomy's New Air Filter For Babies

This brand new toy from Takara Tomy is actually a petite, super cute air filter. It's just under $150 but only available in Japan for concerned parents who don't want their babies breathing in dust and pollution while they sleep.

Link (Japanese)

DS Health Game to be Sold in Drug Stores

For the first time ever in world history, a video game will be sold at drug stores. Starting November 15th, Drug Segami, a drug store chain, will be carrying a Nintendo DS Lite game in stores all over the country. It's called "Kenko Kentei" and it letts players log their health info and recommends exercises and dietary regimes. The software was developed by Yudo, a company started by the guys who created Beatmania and DDR.

Link (Japanese)

The Seven Metabolic Samurai

Reuters reports that seven government officials in Ise started a group called the "Seven Metabolic Samurai"—a play-on-words on the famous Kurosawa film that refers to a dietary regime of hardcore exercise and health food.

Older men dieting is not uncommon in Japan. In fact, it's become trendy, and very high tech (remember the cell phone camera diet plan, instituted this past spring). Talk of metabolic syndrome—excess fat, high blood pressure, high cholestrol—is all over dinner tables and news talk shows. So it's only natural that a bunch of politicians would champion the cause by doing this. Right?

And so the diet samurai continue to train despite the death of one of their colleagues in August—he died of heart failure while jogging. Sad, and scary, but not quite enough to make a samurai terminate his mission.

Link

New Atmospheric Cleaning Device "Washes" Air

This is the antibac2K. It's a compact, lightweight air cleaning system that looks like a spherical alien ship. When you plug it in and switch it on, the blue and green LED lights illuminate and the thing starts spinning, disseminating a proprietary air filtration mist into the atmosphere. The effect is similar to those bulky ionic filters they sell at Sharper Image—it gets rid of bad odors, eliminates allergy-inducing dust particles, and kills of 99.99% of bacteria such as salmonella...but this one's much smaller and cooler-looking.

Product page (Japanese)

Japanese Dentists Smoke A Lot

A recent survey conducted among Japanese dental school students revealed that 62% of men training to become dentists are also regular smokers. Wow! You'd think that dentists wouldn't smoke because of all that hype about how it stains your teeth, etc., right? Perhaps even more surprising, half of all men in their 20s overall smoke. That's a lot. For women, the numbers are a little lowers, but 35% of female dentistry students are smokers, too.

If you've been to Tokyo, you know that restaurants and cafes and night clubs are all very very smoky. Ironically, more and more of Tokyo's wards are banning smoking on the streets (more for environmental than health reasons), so you're more likely to pop into a restaurant to smoke than the other way around.

Link

Cell Phones Destroying Japanese Brains

You always hear that too much cell phone usage could ruin your brainwaves, but is it really true? According to the Mainichi, more and more people in Japan are suffering from electromagnetic wave hypersensitivity. Here's an account describing one victim's ill fate:

Mutsuo Sano found out he'd developed electromagnetic wave hypersensitivity after undergoing an MRI examination back in 1993.

"The examination went on for 1 hour, 40 minutes and I collapsed as soon as it finished," Sano tells Sunday Mainichi. "My head and chest were searing with a pain that felt something like a burn. I couldn't sleep for three days afterwards."

Sano received painkillers, which provided some relief, but as soon as he stopped taking them, the symptoms would return. He sought help from a dozen hospitals, but was told his pain was all in the mind. Finally, he was told he had electromagnetic wave hypersensitivity. Ever since, he's moved house six times to avoid high-voltage power lines or mobile phone transmission bases. He can't use a computer, or mobile phone, must sit at least 6 meters away from his TV and can't stand for long in front of his fridge.

Too many electronics = bad!

Step Machine for Lazy People or Old People

A step machine where you don't have to stand up! Genius. Panasonic's newest exercise gadget is called "Raku Raku Walk" (Easy Walk) and has an adjustable seat paired with the standard Stairmaster paddles. So what the fuck does this do, really? Well, apparently, it gives you an aerobic experience that's easy on the knees. So it strengthens your legs without giving you knee probs later.

Comes out in September, price TBD.

Link (via ImpressWatch)

The Prince is an Alcoholic

The emperor's cousin, Prince Tomohito, is going into alcohol rehab for a month. Can you imagine being his AA counselor? I think it would be very difficult, given all the formalities required to even look at him or touch him, never mind tell him about his substance dependency problems. Good luck to you, doctor from the National Hospital Organization who has been dispatched to his aid.

The Cell Phone Camera Diet Plan

Japanese businessmen don't have time to be reading about the Atkins diet, nor do they have space in their briefcases for cans of SlimFast. Instead, for $20-30 a month, Osaka-dwellers are taking advantage of an awesome new diet plan devised by a collaboration of 150 local governments and medical facilities whereby people can take a picture of their meal with their cell phone cameras and then e-mail it to a nutritionist on stand-by for detailed caloric facts and sage advice.

Obesity, high cholesterol, and metabolic syndrome have been on the rise among the aging Japanese. The cell phone picture diet works for multiple reasons:

1. Everyone has a cell phone.
2. The Japanese like customized, hands-on advice from a trustworthy human much more than the read-the-directions-on-the-box approach that is commonly used in the US.
3. This way, they can still eat whatever the hell they want in the meantime, plus or minus a few things that might be too salty or fatty.

Link (Thanks, Rog!)

24K Gold $300 Facial

No, this is not a picture of a display case at the Egyptian Mummy Museum. This is an actual human, a Japanese human that's very much alive, and is in the middle of being pampered with this 24 karat gold facial which costs 30,000 yen. (Close to $300) Not bad for a gold treatment, I'd say--a normal facial could easily cost $100. It's a bargain, whoopee!!

If this looks worth the money to you, this treatment will be available from beauty treatment company Umo Inc. soon. (UMO is a play on words with UFO, standing for Unidentified Micro-particle Object.)

New Cancer Tech Based On Dog's Nose

Japan's greatest new cancer detector is this 5 year old black lab named Marine. Marine can distinguish up to 18 different types of cancer just from sniffing a human's breath, but there's more: this year, Japanese biomimetics company Seems Inc. is coming out with a portable, cell-phone-sized sensor that mechanically replicates this dog's olfactory skills. The device is slated to come out within six months and will be sold for under 10,000 yen. Now that's pretty affordable and awesome.

via the Japan Times (Thanks, Mary!)

Hello Kitty Air Filter

Just when you think you've had enough of this damn mouthless kitty (for the 100th time), they come out with yet another annoyingly kitschy yet actually quite practical Hello Kitty product. This one, coming out at the end of this month, is a portable air filter. It works the same way as those sleek, silver, super expensive air filters they sell at Sharper Image, using negative ions. It comes with straps so you can put it on the seat of a car or in a baby's crib. That is, if you really want your baby to be constantly exposed to Kitty.

Sanrio Corp [via Impress Watch (Japanese)]

Taspo RFID Card For Cigarette Vending Machines

Big news for underage smokers: You won't be able to buy cigarettes on the streets anymore.  A new system, called "Taspo" (Tabacco Passport), goes into effect in 2008, requiring every smoker to carry around an RFID card issued only to people 18 and over if they want to make a cigarette vending machine purchase. Cards will be issued for free (plus whatever amount of money you put on it), but purchase will require a photo ID and other identification documents.

Currently, 65% of the 30 million smokers in Japan purchase their cigarettes through vending machines, so this is a big step in the Tobacco Institute of Japan's initiative to raise awareness on the dangers of smoking. 

USB Face Mask Cleaner

It's not unusual to see commuters and office workers wearing face masks out in public. It's a perfect deterrent for germs and pollen in cities packed with weird vegetation and people who could be carrying who-knows-what. So why is this woman wearing this mask looking surprised? Actually, this is a look of happy disbelief. Homegirl's sporting a USB-powered face mask cleaner, which has air vents that blows clean air into the tiny threads within the mask, cleaning them out and making it easier to breathe. Just plug into your computer, turn the switch on, and you're guaranteed fresh air throughout the workday.

Product page (Japanese)

Don't Take Tamiflu

A side story to the pill box posted below: I don't recommend carrying around Tamiflu on your cellie. It's known to make kids suicidal. yesterday, a 14-year old girl jumped to her death at her apartment in Aichi Prefecture after being given some Tamiflu at a hospital that morning. Apparently, this is not the first time this has happened:

There have been several reports of bizarre behavior in children who have taken Tamiflu, including leaping from buildings or jumping in front of oncoming cars. However, no causal relationship with the drug has been proven.

So, yeah. Just don't take Tamiflu if you're a borderline depressed kid.

Link

Water That Makes You Skinny

This alkaline ion water product has calcium carbonate, tourmaline from Brazil, and some other magical ingredients that have a slimming effect when dissolved in tap water. All you have to do is ingest 1.5 liters of it a day--in coffee, for cooking rice, for drinking water--and the components will eliminate extra fat, increase metabolism, and burn calories. 

Apparently, it's pretty popular in Taiwan. If anyone's tried it, let me know if it works!

Link (Thanks, Alyssa!)

Device allows paralyzed people to "talk" with their brains.

A new device from Hitachi allows severely paralyzed people to "talk" via measurements of changes in their cerebral blood flow. The device, called "Kokoro Gatari" (Mind Talk), aims to help those with Lou Gehrig's disease communicate, and will be presented at a symposium on Sunday.

Cerebral blood flow increases when people intentionally think about something. The doctor who invented this device instructs patients to do math calculations in their head when they want to say "yes" and to relax their thoughts when they want to say "no."

Full story here.

Portable Ashtray Museum

In Japan, smoking is treated more as an environmental problem than a health problem. In the past few years, laws banning street smoking in certain districts have been passed, and designated smoking booths have popped up all over major cities. The Osaka municipal government claims to have spent 10 million yen last year on cleaning up cigarette butts off the street. That's why Japan Tobacco--the world's #3 tobacco company--is trying to revamp the image of smoking to be something trendy and clean.

This is Japan Tobacco's new Mobile Ashtray Museum, part of the company's latest campaign for "clean" smoking. It sells over 300 kinds of portable ashtrays. Apparently, 70% of Japanese smokers own one, and 27% carry theirs around for daily use. The goal of JT's campaign is to up the latter figure to 30% by the end of next year.

Keep checking back for more featured mobile ashtrays! Read more here.

Hokkaido lawyers sue California water heater company.

A group of Japanese lawyers are preparing to file a lawsuit against California company Paloma Industries for carbon monoxide poisoning caused by the company's gas water heaters.

In July, the Ministry of Trade released a report documenting numerous cases of death by Paloma over the past decade. 10 people had died in Hokkaido from using these "tankless" heating devices in their homes.

The Japanese by nature tend to avoid conflict, so I was surprised by this initiative to challenge a bunch of sue-happy Americans in a court of law. It's kinda like if Napoleon Dynamite fought Mike Tyson in a boxing ring. In any case, I'm rooting for the underdog.

Pressure-point-pusher and instant-stretcher machine.

See all those little white bubbles on the colorful illo of your two feet? Those are all  strategically placed to titillate your pressure points. The angled platform allows you to stretch out your calves, thighs, and back. Just standing on it for one minute a day (while you brush your teeth, or watch the weather forecast) gets you in better shape and rids your body of existing aches and pains.

I've been kinda lazy about exercising lately, so I think I want one. They're 5,800 yen here.

Wonder Beat's wonderful massage.

I just had the best massage of my life! If you are ever in Tokyo and have 6000 yen and one hour to kill, I would head over to Yebisu Garden Place for a no-frills, no-nonsense shiatsu session with Mr. Hirano. I'm sure everyone else there is just as good but this man really knew what he was doing. I just want to float off into Happyland now, but I thought I'd share the experience before I do. The place is called Wonder Beat.

Coming soon: high-tech devices for blind and deaf people.

Japan's Ministry of Health just launched a major collaborative effort with 10+ companies and research institutes to create highly exportable, high-tech devices for people with hearing and vision disabilities, including one that will instantly translate spoken words into cell phone text messages for the hearing impaired. Hitachi and IBM already have gadgets that will read web sites, but nothing that reads printed text from magazines.

Once these awesome devices are created, the Ministry will start by promoting them to local and regional governments, which are created by law to assist the hearing and vision impaired. A total of 270,000 Japanese fit this category.

The robotic chick in the picture is Hitachi's animated sign language woman.

Full story here.

Finally, a clean place for dirty men to get a quickie makeover.

Yes, it's finally here, a one-stop shop for all salarymen who need a quick fixer-upper before a business meeting or a date with his illegitimate girlfriend. Nestled inconspicuously in between a pharmacy and a convenience store in salaryman-infested Jimbocho, Menza offers everything from manicures to finger exercise sessions to one-minute advice on whether their facial hair is aptly shaven. The salaryman pictured above paid 300 yen to get a spritz of deodorant from the lovely lady in salmon pink.