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!

Video: Top 10 middle school textbook graffiti genres

In a funny Top 10 list created by the popular TV show Spring of Trivia, a team of researchers went through the pages of 10,000 middle school textbooks and tallied what kind of graffiti was the most common. Among them — bloody noses, unibrows, forehead wrinkles, faux wigs, and the #1 most common type of textbook graffiti = speech bubbles.

via Spoon and Tamago

Ad features Tommy Lee Jones as a coffee-drinking alien

My friend Erin Biba clued me into this funny commercial for Boss coffee featuring Tommy Lee Jones. I remember when he was on giant billboard ads for Boss, but I don't know if I ever saw this one. In it, TLJ is an alien from outer space who has come to investigate the earth. He's working with a team of cops who outrun him, but ultimately he flies a set of stairs and tackles the bad guy. The commercial ends with the cops saying, "He's not the bad guy. It's the world that created him that's at fault."

American celebrities show up in Japanese ad campaigns a lot. Most of the recent ones, like Brad Pitt for Softbank, have been removed from YouTube because of copyright shit, but you can see a lot of the old ones (Michael Jackson! The Simpsons! Mariah Carey!) on Japander.

Tokyo's 2016 Olympic bid video

Tokyo didn't win the 2016 Olympics, but they did make a pretty cool bid video. In case you missed the news, Rio de Janeiro won, with Madrid coming in as first runner up and Tokyo next. Chicago was the first to go. I love Rio — I went last year, and thought it was a beautiful city.

Related story:
10 reasons why Japanese people should emigrate to Brazil

Video: Government's ominous meth warning

This short video clip made by the Japanese government aired on TV shortly after the recent drug arrest of actress Noriko Sakai. In it, a "bad" man peer pressures his girlfriend to try meth. She ends up folding to the pressure, then suffers choking coughs, addiction, and hallucinations. Is it just me or do these "drugs are horrible!" videos seem propaganda-ish? This is not only in Japan, btw &mdash I think the American PSAs about smoking, etc are just as bad.

(Thanks, Dave!)

Artsy video shows a designer and his beautiful colored pencils

This lovely video, aptly titled "White Box," shows a designer contemplating his colored pencils and a simple white box on his drafting table. This was actually created by director Makoto Yabuki for architecture firm Sturdy Style.

And if you liked this, or even if you didn't, you should watch Right Place, a short film about an OCD combini man, and Cornelius' awesome music video for Fit.

via NotCot

Video: Cute tabletop robot girl makes coffee

In this adorable YouTube video, a black-haired miniature robot girl named Hina grinds and makes coffee from scratch.

Clockwork main page (Thanks, @Bauldoff!)

Video: Dog does squats with owner

In this video, an eager dog with strong back legs does squats with his owner in their living room. Awesome! (Thanks, Brian!)

BB Video episode from Maker Faire 2009

Maker Faire, my favorite artsy crafty geeky event of the year, was a couple weeks ago. I walked around with Make EIC and fellow Boinger Mark Frauenfelder to check out some of our favorite things. Link

Video: Me and Urawaza on View from the Bay

I hesitated about putting this up on TokyoMango-a LOT-because it's kinda embarrassing to see myself on TV, but here it is: a clip from my appearance on ABC's View from the Bay in July 2008. I'm actually also on their new digital network show, Home with Lisa Quinn on Live Well HD, but I haven't seen that yet. Don't laugh!

Experimental Japan: reader-made stop motion video

TokyoMango reader and photographer Dave Lee made this cool stop motion video of Japan. Love the rabbit at the end!

Mr. Ando of the Woods—a quirky animated short film

This is so funny! 5-minute animated skit about whether a guy named Mr. Ando is human or not, by quirky animator Takashi Taniguchi.

via Pink Tentacle

Video: Japanese man is the best bartender in the world

The best bartender in the world? Keisuke Goto, a Japanese guy who blew the crowd away at a Texas tournament recently.

via Japan Probe

RuPaul's new music vid has NND-syle mash-up porn (NSFW, maybe)

In his new music video for the song Jealous of my Boogie, famed drag queen RuPaul takes inspiration from the otaku community's obsession with American porn star Billy Herrington. The video sharing site Nico Nico Douga has tons of mash-ups of Herrington's old porn flicks; RuPaul tapped into this and made his own. I'm sure it will be huge in Japan.

By the way, someone just told me that RuPaul's new America's-Next-Top-Model-for-drag-queens reality show is really good. The first season just ended, so I'm going to splurge on reruns.

Video: The manner mode pen, and why Japan makes seemingly useless gadgets

I had a virtual guest speaker at my ETech session on Japanese tech and toys. Consultant Morinosuke Kawaguchi joined us via this video, in which he explains why Japan makes seemingly useless gadgets like the "manner mode" pen. It's very insightful!

Related story: The Shibuya cell phone video

Video: Otagei = a new dance form for Akiba geeks only

Otagei is a unique dance form that originated in the backstreets of Akihabara. It literally means "otaku tricks," and entails a series of strange moves, or tricks, that geeks do to send energy to anime singers and maid idols on stage. I had the unique opportunity to see otagei up close while reporting a story about maid cafes for Afar, and learned some of the moves myself. You can, too. Just follow the steps of the guys in the video. We'll be touching on the topic at ETech, too. A much more close-up look at the art form after the jump.

Video of tourists licking fish at Tsukiji

This video gives us a brief in-depth look into why the Tsukiji Fish Market decided to ban tourists for its busy season this month. The first segment features a group of drunk Londoners touching and licking the fish; then a couple blocks street traffic by taking photos; then two white guys ride around in the vehicles used to transport fish around. The Japanese guy interviewed makes a valid point: he says they allowed tourists here because they thought it would be an interesting learning experience to see how the fish market operated; but at the point where they are blatantly disrupting operations, its time for an intervention. More info on Japan Probe.

Guy plays Christmas songs on a broccoli flute

Emily found a YouTube video of a guy playing Angels We Have Heard On High on a broccoli head. It looks like he made the instrument himself; his wife is accompanying him on an electronic keyboard.

Artist creates music, electrocutes face to the beat

Daito Manabe is a thirty-something year old artist/programmer/composer who is best known for his "electric simulus to face" test—he hooked his face muscles up to electrodes that were synced up to some electronic music he created himself. Every new beat electrocutes a different part of his body, making his face do a crazy twitchy dance.

Link (Thanks, Angela!)

Funny machine leasing ads make fun of humans

A machine leasing company called Nanyo has made a series of local TV commercials that explain why there are some things humans just can't do in fun, creative ways. 

Link

Kenzo Saeki and Toast Girl's tributes to Claude Francois

I had the great pleasure of hanging out with and interviewing Toast Girl on Tuesday night in Golden Gai. She works in a tiny Chanson-themed bar on the corner. The whole evening was pretty rad, and around 11PM, the dude in this video walked in with MatsuYou, one of the celebrity bloggers I interviewed for Wired a few months ago. (I thought I'd posted this video on Mango before, but I was wrong—I wrote about it on Boing Boing while I was guest-blogging there.)

Clo Clo Made in Japan is this neat collaborative CD that celebrates the French sixties pop star Claude François, most famous for the song My Way, later popularized by Frank Sinatra. They're having a concert in Tokyo on 11/27 if anyone's interested. I'd love to go, but I'm heading back to SF on Sunday.

Toast Girl's Chanson Populaire video and a pic I snapped of her behind the bar at Soiree after the jump.

Obama town's crazy dance moves

Obama's going to be the new president of the United States, and whole world is super psyched! One little seaside town in Fukui, Japan, is particularly ecstatic because their town name, which means Little Beach, is pronounced "OBAMA" in Japanese. Emily did some research for us and found this awesome video of the Obama dance. She also dug up the following deets:

Their "Obama for Obama" support group are ingenious in a typical Japanese fashion; creating Obama manju, Obama chopsticks, Obama kimonos, and even Obama fish burgers. Some of their committee members are hoping to fly to Washington to attend his inauguration. They're hoping that the Obama hula girls will be asked on stage to perform—unlikely, but hey, anything can happen.

Related stories:
People in Japan love Obama
Obama wins Japanese primaries

Video: Brian braves human speed-walker traffic at Shinagawa Station

Human traffic at any major transfer station in Tokyo on a weekday is completely off the hook. Brian and I needed to get from the convenience store to the ticket wicket across the giant hall at Shinagawa Station on our way to Narita, but the people kept coming, speed walking down the concourse at the exact same pace as if they were marching to work together. Here's a video of Brian making a run for it.

Video: What to do if a rhino escapes from the zoo

What do you do if an angry rhino escapes from his cage in the zoo? To make sure the tranquilizer-toting zookeepers are on alert, a zoo in Tokyo had this kinda hilarious Rhino Drill.

via Boing Boing

The Yatta song featuring lots of almost-naked dudes

This is a very happy song called "Yatta!" The phrase was made universally famous by Hiro from Heroes, but it's long been a part of the expression of joy in Japan. Part of this song's chorus goes: Yatta! Yatta! All you need is one leaf.

I think somebody linked to this video in the comments somewhere, though I apologize because I can't remember where it was.

Denpa, the Biggest Geek Dance Party Ever

The biggest geekiest parties ever don't happen in Silicon Valley. They take place at DENPA, a bimonthly event in Tokyo that brings cosplay enthusiasts and anime geeks out from behind their computer screens and between the aisles of Akihabara hobby shops into a giant nightclub with strobe lights and DJs. Why do geeks flock to this nightclub? The giant projector screen showing the Uma Uma dance holds the answer. (Click here and scroll down to see the silly video I made for Wired in which I explain the significance of the Uma Uma.)

These guys aren't here to drink and get laid—they're here to geek out to one of the most popular web memes on the Japanese web ever. They show up in vans painted with their favorite anime characters and wigs that make them look just like them. They don't dance with each other—they all dance facing the giant screen, hands up by their heads, screaming U-u-uma-uma! at the top of their lungs. What a release!

My friend Ichiru just went (for the second time—he's hooked) and blogged about it; this is a video he made from his first time. I really hope they have one next time I'm in Tokyo!

High-Speed Roller Skating Ninja Chase

If you ever wondered what it would be like to be chased by a bunch of ninjas on roller skates, this clip will show you. Scary-ish.

via Zaeega

Cool Electropop Music Video Featuring 8-Bit Kimono Women

Check out this cool music video for a song called Yosawya-san by Japanese electropop group Omodaka from Far East Recordings. I like how the whole time, they make it look like the little kimono-clad 8-bit ladies with the shamisen are the ones playing the song.

I posted another Omodaka video on Boing Boing.

 

(Thanks, Matt!)

Guy Imitating the Bony Rapyuta Bot

Remember the cute bony robot soldier in Hayao Miyazaki's classic anime Rapyuta: Castle in the Sky? Well there's a dude in Japan who can do a perfect imitation of him without even wearing a robot suit. His name is Masaaki Okuyama, and he's a 28-year old salaryman at a cell phone company in Tokyo. Funny guy! This is a clip from a TV show in which people with quirky talents come on stage and are judged with a tower of lights by a panel of celebrities.

via Gizmodo Japan

Southern All Stars, My Favorite Japanese Band, to Semi-Retire

Some of my all-time favorite music is created by a five-man pop-rock band from a beach town near Tokyo. They're called the Southern All Stars, and their music kicks ass across multiple generations the way the Rolling Stones do in the Western music world. They debuted in 1978, and on Saturday, they kicked off a concert series spanning two weekends that precedes a long indefinite break.

Keisuke Kuwata is the band's 52-year old lead singer, and you can see him here singing Ellie, My Love, a 1979 hit single that Ray Charles covered a decade later. His wife, Yuko Hara, is also in the band, and the guitarist is my friend Hayato's uncle. I've always, always wanted to see these guys live, but sadly it looks like I might never get to. My dad once bought me a concert DVD and I watched it all the time. Check out a video of one of his more provocative songs after the jump.

Angry Escalator Goes in Reverse, Injures 20

Gizmodo has a great video of a convention center escalator that suddenly starts going in reverse at a Tokyo convention center. (Is it Big Sight? I can't immediately tell.) It's an interesting look at how people respond to unexpected, random disaster. 20 people got injured, one with a broken leg, which was the worst of the bunch.

Link

Urawaza: Me on Daytime TV Doing Tricks

I was on TV today, on a local ABC show called View from the Bay to promote my book, Urawaza. Lisa Quinn's the host—she's like a bad-ass Martha Stewart. I thought I'd feel like a monkey doing tricks in front of the camera, but it actually wasn't that bad.

You can watch the clip by clicking on the image above or by following this link.

Ken Shimura's Thriller Parody (and Tips on Upping your Japanese Joke Cred)

If you want to know the first thing about Japanese humor, then you have to get to know Ken Shimura. He started off as part of a five-man show called the Drifters; later, two branched off to become Kato-chan and Ken-chan, an iconic comedy duo from the 80s, more famous and influential than Beat Takeshi to most mainstream Japanese. Ken Shimura was always the pack leader. Deceptively good looking but outrageously silly and politically incorrect, he mass marketed below-the-belt jokes, inappropriate slapping, and the unique blend of traditional Japanese and contemporary Japanese and Western influences. He also spearheaded some of the most famous Japanese TV memes ever, like "Daijobu da" and "Henna ojisan."

Here's a video of one of his more famous skits, a hilarious Thriller parody that ends with Henna ojisan. More videos after the jump.

Lose Weight with the Skewered Chicken Dance

You have to try this silly dance at home. It's called the yakitori jisan (old skewered chicken man) exercise, and it features some of the funniest, most liberating moves ever. If you do it enough, you can lose some weight, build some core strength, and gain a reputation from your neighbors for being a really  living room dancer.

(Thanks, Paul!)

Akino Kondoh Artsy Video Features Creepy-Cool B&W Girl

This is a strangely mesmerizing animated music video created by Chiba-born artist Akino Kondoh. It features a folk-ish song about body-less children and a little Daria-esque morphing girl in black-and-white. Kondoh's work has been featured in museums across the world, including cities like Stockholm, Shanghai, and Boston.

Tokyo iPhone Launch Video Featuring Danny Choo

Here's a super silly video created by Danny Choo. It gives you a sense of how crowded and hot it was at the iPhone launch in Omotesando. And what an attention magnet Danny is. (And it's not just Apple geeks--he gets down with hot Akiba girls too.) I'm pretty sure that's my friend Ichiroo Kiyota from Gizmodo who makes a cameo appearance with an iPhone on his head.

Sticker Tells You How Stressed Out Your Dog Is

I picked up this little mood-telling sticker in Tokyo, and I tested it out on my minpin Ruby. The three different colors on the sticker indicate relaxation, stress, and extreme stress. Ruby, it turns out, is very relaxed. Whew.

Video: Me in a Real Japanese Game Show

Last week, I blogged about the new ABC reality series I Survived a Japanese Game Show, and how unrealistic and kinda racist it is. I just dug up this old clip from Muscle Park, a game show-based amusement park in Odaiba, Tokyo. Sadly, this amateur YouTube vid that my brother took of me doing the Sasuke challenge  is a much more accurate depiction of what a Japanese game show is really like than ABC's multi-million dollar version. They actually had a live commentator at each game, which made it super funny.

Related stories:
Lara's Coordination Skillz Video from Muscle Park
Don't Drop the Basketball!

Video: Wired People Dancing the Uma Uma

Okay, so a couple months ago, I was working on an article about Japanese Internet culture that ran in the June issue of Wired. The main character in the story is Hiroyuki Nishimura, a roguish web entrepreneur whose two web sites, 2channel and Nico Nico Douga, have spawned a huge collection of strange web memes that dominate the subterfuge of the Japanese Internet.

One of the strange web memes is the Uma Uma Dance. Some people thought the chorus of a Swedish dance track called Caramelldansen sounded like "uma uma" or horsey horsey in Japanese, and they made a video of popular anime characters doing this little bunny ear dance to it.

As part of the reporting process, I went to Japan and met dozens of experts and web geeks. I spent hours watching Nico Nico videos, and I even convinced my coworkers at Wired to help me make a Uma Uma video of our own. Then we uploaded onto YouTube and Nico Nico Douga. We got tons of crazy comments on the NicoDou version, which you can't see here—but they said things like: "What is this? An American joke?"

If you have a NicoDou account, you can watch the commented version here. Otherwise, here's the YouTube version for your entertainment, featuring unnamed silly characters from the Wired editorial department.

Artsy Exercise Video by Poodle-esque Gymnast

Check out this must-see inspiring exercise video guided by world champion gymnast Mariko Takahashi. It's for poodles, mostly, but I think it could be useful for humans who want to stay soft, fit, and poodley, too. The full title of this video is "Mariko Takahashi's Fitness Video for Being Appraised as an 'Ex-fat Girl.'" It was actually created for Panasonic by a female pop artist named Nagi Noda.

Link

NSFW: Sexy Sumo Wrestler Car Wash Ad

I guess my friend Alyssa thinks sumo wrestlers are sexy, because she just sent me this video of six chunky, hunky, mostly naked guys in fundoshi doing their version of a sexy carwash. It's actually a really funny Subaru ad.

New Documentary Highlights Problem of Vanishing Electronics

The latest episode of BoingBoing TV is about a Japanese pop culture documentary called Tokyology. There's an interesting segment about a new law that could put all the electronics parts stores in Akihabara out of business. Before there were maid cafes and cosplay stores and megastores like Don Quixote, Akiba was a treasure trove of vintage electronics. It still is, they've just been pushed into the back streets, behind all the flashiness. It would be a real shame if they went out of business—so a group of young artists featured in the documentary pay homage to them in their "exhibition of vanishing products."

The Little Japanese Kid Who Jumped Over a Car

Check out this video from Japan Probe of a little Japanese kid jumping over a car. Not as cool as Kobe Bryant jumping over a moving Aston Martin, but pretty damn ergonomic nonetheless.

Video: Little Red Riding Hood Booby Ad

Crazy Japan Ad - Little Red Riding Hood - Funny bloopers R us This strange ad features a parodied Little Red Riding Hood and four furries who start off telling a fairytale and end with an interesting little dance that you just have to see for yourself. I'd translate, but it's pretty funny even if you don't know what they're saying.

Video: Stormtrooper Cosplayer Dancing With Hot Japanese Girls

I hung out in Akiba on Monday with some peeps I met and their friends. First, we watched these two very good looking Japanese girls dancing on the street with Stormtrooper, aka Danny Choo. It's kinda like that cosplayer Haruhi dance that was all over the Internet last year—except this one didn't end in a police raid. Then we followed the two girls to another location where we took a bunch of pictures with them. Then we sat down for coffee at a large cafeteria that monitors your health. Pics after the jump.

Naked Horse-Headed Man Eats Mushrooms

Here, a Japanese performance artist wearing a horse's head and a mankini cooks and eats a magic mushroom. The video is set to a tune from Final Fantasy. WTF?

via 3yen

Video: Hal & Bons and the Yappy Mochi Journalist

Reading Lisa's entry about mochi deaths, I was overcome with the urge to eat some myself, so I microwaved some frozen mochi squares. As I happily ate them (with natto, no less), I remembered "mochi-kun," an anthropomorphic mochi character in one of the sillier creations I'd seen in recent years: Hal & Bons. It was a DVD series that became a bit of a sensation in 2001. It's a bizarre, hilarious and absolutely pointless collection of animated shorts about a socially awkward but loveable mochi who tries to interview a pair of beer-swigging, couch-potato dogs. In 2006, Katsuhito Ishii (the director of The Taste of Tea) created The New Hal & Bons. A few from the original series have been subtitled and available on YouTube, but I haven't found any subtitled versions of the new series online yet.

Newest YouTube Celeb: Helmeted Geek Girl Wired to a Mac

This is Yuka Ritty, Japan's newest geeky-chic YouTube celeb. She's actually a grad school student-turned-performer who goes everywhere with her Mac, her white helmet, and other random props, like a mannequin head bought in India. They're all wired together at all times to show the interconnectivity between humans, machines, and mannequins.

The song she performs here is called "Elevator." Basically, she's just singing about what it's like to be an elevator.

Yuka Ritty's homepage (via Gizmodo Japan)

Adidas Soccer Billboard Features Real Hanging Humans Playing

Check out this 2006 Adidas billboard featuring two real humans hanging from rope and playing soccer above everyone's heads.

Link (Japanese)

New Nissan Rogue Ad

Check out this new Nissan Rogue ad from Chiat Day (ad agency in LA). Apparently they spent 8-months—which included a photo shoot in Mexico—to perfect it. You've probably seen it already if you're a Heroes fanatic like me.

Do you guys remember this tilting marble game? It's really hard for a marble, imagine what it's like for a SUV maneuvering through crowded city streets.

Anyway, the ad is awesome and you should watch it.

Watch the ad

Little Chinese Girl Rocks Out On Xylophone

This little Chinese girl, who makes an appearance here on a Japanese TV show, is really good at playing the xylophone. And she's having so much fun!

(Thanks, Cherlyn!)