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!

Pocky fortune-teller predicts love life accurately

The fortune-telling app on the Pocky web site is strikingly accurate. If you read Japanese, it's definitely worth checking out.

Pocky.jp via My Spiritual

PARC theme day on Boing Boing Gadgets

Hey guys, if you have a sec hop on over to BBG to check out the stories Steven and I are doing on PARC, the esteemed Palo Alto Research Center. Don't miss photos and diagrams of the first ethernet cable in the world, the carpet on which graphical user interfaces were conceived, a mirror that helps you comparison shop, a gallery of caution signs, and interviews about what it's like to work there.

Praise Salon is a web site that just says nice things about you

There's a web site called Praise Salon that is supposedly pretty popular in Japan. The intro screen asks you whether you're male or female, and then lets you choose from a menu of several occupation. It then asks you, would you like to be praised? If you click on Yes, this funny techno beat comes on and the screen starts filling up with sentences saying how awesome you are.

via Asiajin

Town sells four school buildings on Yahoo! Auction

Ever wish you could own a school building in Hokkaido? Now you can. A small town called Nikappu is putting four elementary school buildings on Yahoo! Auction, with bidding starting at about $200K. Not a bad deal, considering it includes everything from the main campus building to the gym and pool and teachers' dorms. The reason for the auction is a little depressing, though—the number of children in Japan is on a decline because of the low birth rate, and seven schools in this town alone shut down in the past year.

via IT Media (Japanese) and Asiajin

Shokotan in a hazmat suit for Norton ad

Check out this awesome Norton Symantec anti-virus ad featuring otaku celebrity Shokotan in a Hazmat suit. Pret-ty cute!

via Pink Tentacle

TV Asahi caught making up fake blogs for source material

TV Asahi, one of Japan's major television news networks, was caught red-handed making fake online sources for one of a quiz show. Th quiz show was about superstitions—the anchor brought up clues from the Internet based on fake blogs that the TV Asahi crew made up and then cited as proof of whatever they were proving. Of course, they got caught, and now they're bowing deeply for what brings many many shame points to a media organization that once had Rupert Murdoch pining for its ownership. Actually, TV Asahi has one other faking scandal in its past—nearly two decades ago, it was caught using actors to portray crime victims in a news video. For shame, TV Asahi. This is definitely not how one should take advantage of the Internet revolution.

via Asiajin

Web bulletin 2-channel moves to Singapore

Internet bad boy Hiroyuki Nishimura, whom I wrote an article about in last June's WIRED, announced on his blog recently that he moved his notorious massive online bulletin 2-channel to Singapore. 2-channel, which was previously owned by Nishimura alone, is now owned by a Singaporean company called Packet Monster, Inc. What does this mean? It's probably part of his strategy to avoid the gazillions of yen he owes via libel suits against the site. Or, maybe the rumors are true that the site's existence is in serious jeopardy.

Link

Web site uses Google Maps to chart stink spots

Nioibu.com is a website created by smell fanatics attempting to mark Japan's smelliest spots on Google Maps. Each smell has a short description, the source, intensity and the occurring date of the stink. After a strong odor inflames their nostrils, Nioibu users will hastily scramble back home, eager to record their stinky experience on Nioibu. Their listed sites range from the smell of the sea to gas fumes. (by Emily Co)

Link

YouTube manga girl Magibon explains fame, and parody videos

In a live interview on a Japanese TV show, Magibon explains how she became one of Japan's favorite YouTube stars. Also, some slightly disturbing Magibon parody videos after the jump.

Internet cafe doubles as a karaoke joint

You may not think that the urges to sing karaoke and surf the web come hand in hand, but in Tokyo, they often do. That's why there's KaraNet, the karaoke & Internet cafe that's open 24 hours. The karaoke rooms and Internet booths are actually separate, but you could still spend all day in this bright red building. Price list after the jump.

I'm speaking about Japanese tech culture at ETech

I was invited to speak at ETech, O'Reilly's annual flagship emerging technology conference. It will be held in March in San Jose, CA. My thingy will be on Wednesday, March 11 at 2:55PM, and I'll be talking about seemingly strange web apps and gadgets that actually give us great insight into the foundations of Japanese popular culture. The conference is kinda expensive, but there are some great speakers on the lineup—Joi Ito, Gary Wolf, Mary Lou Jepsen—well worth it if you want to hear some of the best idea people talk about what's up and coming. Details on my talk are here.

My afternoon at Monkey Net, a halfway house for otaku

Yesterday afternoon, I found myself with two hours to kill and an itch to do something meaningful in Akihabara. I sat down at Mister Donuts with a French cruller and American coffee, reading the Cool Japan Akiba guide book that I had half-jokingly bought the day before at Nakano Broadway with Moot, the founder of 4chan. I tried checking my email on my iPod Touch but had no luck. There's this crazy building on one of the side streets that I was dying to check out. It has, one on top of the other, a Gundam bar, a military-themed cafe, and a imouto maid cafe where they call you "big brother" and "big sister" instead of master and mistress. I walked over. Gundam bar and military cafe were closed, and I just couldn't imagine walking into the imouto place by myself, so I left. I tried checking my email on my iPod Touch but had no luck.

Finally, I decided I was tired of walking around and checked myself into Monkey Net.

Giant Anti-2Ch Online Forum for Women

There are many reasons to hate 2-channel. It's messy. It's unmoderated. People say so much bad shit there that it hurts your ears even when you're just reading. The guy who runs it is kind of a dick. Enter Hatsugen Komachi, a similarly anonymous giant Japanese online bulletin, except this one is made for women and run by Yomiuri newspaper. And the ads are not all related to porn.

Our friends at Asiajin.com translated some of the thread topics. The sample subjects are interesting insights into what Japanese women today are worried about and discussing:

* My 61 year old daddy is going to travel with a woman, and he kept it secret to my mother. Should I tell my mom?

* In my childhood, my mom told me that my neighbour described me as a ‘very ugly baby’. Now I’m in my 30s, but still I can’t overcome that word.

* My husband is an Otaku, and has many robot toys. I can’t bear it, so I discarded all those garbages while he’s working. We fought over it when he came back home. Getting mad by discarding toys, what a childish person he is? How can I make him regret? Give me advice! (She got lots of blaming replies)

Hatsugen Komachi main page

Chipuya Town: Cutsey Virtual World On Your Cell Phone

This fall, cuteness comes to your cell phone screens with customizable avatars hanging out in a virtual world of games and shopping, all available for free download. I wrote a short Japanese School Girl Watch story about it in Wired's December issue.

Read it here

 

USB Dog Tag/Chew Toy

These colorful, 512MB USB drives from Solid Alliance are shaped like doggie bones and also have that chewy, silicone-y texture that dogs love to chew on. This thing wouldn't last a minute in Ruby's presence. Anyway, it can also double as a cute little dog tag—you can store all your dog's information on the drive in case she ever gets lost.

Social Networking Site for Mahjongg Fanatics

There's a new social networking site in Japan called "Nani Kiru," which is aimed specifically towards mahjongg fanatics hoping to bond across the fuzzy green table and online. You register, log in, and then you answer a series of questions related to the game (i.e. what moves you would make when faced with specific situations). You can even make your own questions for others to answer, and then see how people respond on message boards. It sounds simple and very niche, but apparently tons of people have been anticipating the launch of such a site. More features and apps to come as the site ages.

Link (Japanese)

Vanity Webcam Makes You Look Pretty

I know it looks like this girl is just admiring herself in a mirror placed strategically next to her laptop, but that mirror is actually a webcam from Thanko—not only is it recording her live, but it's shining a bright white light on her that makes her look like a supermodel. Highly recommended for those who have been trying to score dates using video chat.

Cell Phone Software for Eye Recognition

Oki Electric's newest cell phone software is an iris recognition system perfect for spies and other mysterious people who don't want anyone else to use their cell phones, ever. The algorithm-based software is compatible with Windows Mobile 2003, XP, and Symbian (used on most Nokia handsets), and scans your eye via a component in or around the cell phone camera. Comes out end of the month.

Link

Tokyo Web Trend Map 2007!!

In this neatly color-coded and detailed graphic, Information Architects Japan has located the top 200 Web sites worldwide—including everything from Google to Wikipedia to BoingBoing to Fake Steve Jobs—and mapped them to match the Tokyo subway system. Each train line is color-coded by genre, and the "forecast" shows potential for growth and success based on their research. The digits on the bottom right signify whether they're Web 1.0, 2.0, or 3.0. I could sit here and analyze this map forever, but lucky for me, the makers of the map have done this already. An excerpt from their Web site:

1. Google has moved from Shibuya, a humming place for young people, to Shinjuku, a suspicious, messy, Yakuza-controlled, but still a pretty cool place to hang out (Golden Gaya).
2. Youtube has conquered Shibuya.
3. Microsoft has moved to Ikebukuro, if you know what I mean.
4. Yahoo is in Ueno, a nice place but nothing going on there.
5. Wikipedia now is in Shimbashi, the place for the square and hard-headed Salaryman, like the Wikipedia watchdogs.
6. The Chinese line runs parallel to the “share line” which starts with the main pirates…
7. Paper info designer Tufte is right below the Federated Media, right before joining with the interactive information design circle in a 90 degree angle.
8. “You” are in the Emperor’s palace, in the center of the network.

Link (Thanks, Chris!)

Japan's Version of Digg: Everyone's Topics

Minna no Topics (Everyone's Topics) is Japan's version of Digg, the oh-so-popular news site that lets users submit and vote on stuff they like. But while Digg seems to have a stronger emphasis on technology and science-related content, Minna no Topics is full of life hacks and personal advice. For example, the first post on yesterday's top page (shown here) is about credit policy; the second is about how to hook up with a married woman; and the third is about getting divorced after finding out your partner's cheating on you. And instead of text-only Digg pages, these have animated icons indicating the type of post you're looking at.

Minna no Topics launched in March, and is operated by Yahoo! Japan.

Scary Microsoft Windows 3.1 Commercial

Can you imagine loving Windows so much that you have to have it on your dinner plate? This silly little commercial features a scary castle in the middle of a thunderstorm, doberman pinschers, and a geeky Microsoft fanatic having dinner with the creepy guy who presumably lives here.

Even though all the hype's over the MacBook series these days, Japan's still very much Windows-based.

(Thanks, Chris!)

New YouTube Graffiti Site Lets You Draw All Over Videos

Rakugaki.in is a new Web site (launched a couple days ago) that lets you draw graffiti all over your favorite YouTube videos without the hassle of uploading or editing anything. Here's a test run I did on a series of old school Japanese TV commercials. Problem is, my "rakugaki" (graffiti) kinda sucks. I guess I could have put more time into making sure it fits the characters that wear it, and that it doesn't stay on the screen longer than it's supposed to.

Rakugaki.in is the newest invention of Satoru Yano, the man who created Jimaku.in, which lets you write captions for your YouTube video, and Moza Moza Movie, which lets you use custom-made stamps—or "mozaiku" (which is what the Japanese use to sensor porn)—to bleep out parts you don't want your kids (or your boyfriend) to see.

If any of you try it and come up with something worth sharing, please include the URL in the comments section. (The sites are in Japanese, but you can use your computer's translator to try to make sense out of it. Once you get to the editing screen, it's pretty self-explanatory.)

Google Book Search Japan Launches

Google Book Search, the search engine's find-a-book-and-read-an-excerpt app, launched in Japan today. Very exciting. It's really useful when you need to find some obscure fact that you don't quite know how to find otherwise because it doesn't fit neatly under one category, or something. I once got offered a job at Google to help launch Book Search Japan. If I had taken it, I probably would be able to tell you a lot more about the program—but I didn't. Then again, if I had taken the job, I probably wouldn't have this blog and I wouldn't be able to tell you about it anyway. So yeah. That's all I have to say about that.

Link (Japanese)

Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Virtual Tokyo in Second Life

What's up with Japan's sudden infatuation with virtual worlds? Game designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi of Lumines fame just announced that he will be creating a virtual Tokyo inside of Second Life. Can't wait to see it!

Link (via Jean Snow)

What Japanese Celebrity Do YOU Look Like?

Send a picture of your face to male@kaocheki.jp or female@kaocheki.jp to find out. They're kind of picky about what pictures are recognizable (has to be clear, just your face, full frontal, etc) but if it does work, you should get an immediate reply with the name of the Japanese celebrity you look like. If you don't read Japanese, then send me the text and I'll translate.

The above is who Kaocheki said my friends and I resemble. Hahaha.

Read more about Kaocheki here.

Made in Japan Virtual Worlds Coming This Winter

This winter, expect to see the Japanese population in online worlds multiply as some of the country's greatest animators collaborate on projects to create virtual Tokyos that combine anime-grade visuals, creative freedom, and virtual real estate.

Here's what we know so far:

Studio 4°C—a collaboration of the genius minds behind classics like My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service—is designing a world called "Cyber Megacity: Tokyo's 0th Ward." The press release promises many surprises ahead as the best animators in the world experiment with new media.

Production I.G. (Ghost in the Shell) and Studio Pierrot (Naruto) are collaborating with gaming companies and news organizations to create "meet me," a metaverse catered specifically toward a Japanese audience. Smart idea—if you know anything about the conception of user-friendly in Japan vs. the US, it's totally different. Plus, with the kinds of creative minds working on this thing, meet-me could just kick Second Life out of cyberspace.

I'll keep you guys posted as I find out more.

Anime News Network (via Jean Snow)

Face Recognition Software Used to Compare You With Celebs

A company called J-Magic created this cool new service called "FACE CHECK" (Kaocheki) that tells you what celebrities you look like—for real, not in your imagination. All you have to do is take a picture of yourself with your cell phone camera and then email it to male@kaocheki.jp or female@kaocheki.jp. The company will scan your face and send you back three photos of celebrities that look like you based on Oki's face recognition software. 15 million users have taken advantage of this service since its launch last month, making it one of Japan's newest cell phone obsessions.

Link

Order Books Online, Pick Up At Convenience Store

Rakuten Books just started a cool new service that lets you order books online and then have them delivered for free to your nearest Family Mart. (Family Mart is a convenience store chain with 7000 branches nationwide. i.e. there's one in every neighborhood.) You don't have to put any of your personal information online to do it, either. Here's how it works, and refer to the lovely red-and-white illos above for reference:

1. Pick your desired products online.
2. Choose "pay at convenience store" from the drop-down payment option menu.
3. Choose the Family Mart nearest you from the delivery method menu.
4. Wait for an email that says "Your books are on their way to the convenience store."
5. Go to Family Mart and pick up your books at the cash register.

So easy and cool! Plus I love going to convenience stores because they have the best candy selection ever.

Hi-Tech Umbrella With Flickr and Google Earth

This is Pileus, an umbrella devised by two researchers in Keio University's Media Design department that has a pre-installed Flickr uploader and wi-fi so you can browse your photo gallery while you walk in the rain. A little bit distracting, sure, but no more than text messaging on your cell phone or playing your DS Lite.

Pileus also has Google Earth-driven GPS, a built-in camera, compass, and a motion sensor. It's just a prototype for now, but its co-creators are actively seeking commercial interest.

Pileus (via <3Yen)

Ruzilla Firefox

Did I ever tell you that Ruby modeled for Mozilla when they were looking for a logo for their web browser, Firefox?

Second Life Launching In Japan

Big news for Japan-based MMORPG-ers: The Japanese version of Second Life is about to launch! You can sign up for the beta version now.

Did I ever tell you about the month I spent in Second Life on assignment for Wired? It was crazy! I got so many wildly inappropriate sexual messages from online weirdos, befriended former sex workers who now run escort services online, people who left their real life husbands for their second life husbands, and some dude who called himself Dr. something-or-the-other, a self-proclaimed sexual harassment specialist. And I got paid by the hour to do this.

Ginza's Ubiquitous Tech Experiment

The streets of Ginza are tapped with over a thousand tiny RFID chips that are a part of the Tokyo Ubiquitous Technology Project, a billon-yen experiment by the Japanese government to see how helpful it is to tourists, the elderly, the disabled, and other disoriented people to have location and resource information continuously streamed into their consciousness via an iPod-like portable device. Every time someone walks by a tagged location, the device picks up its signal and brings audio and video reports of, say, the Apple store's newest featured items or the history of the Mitsukoshi department store. It also provides maps and directions.

The project is in an experimental stage right now, but it's available 4 languages, and similar infrastructure may end up stateside soon. (According to the Japan Times, some US cities are already showing interest.)

The Japanese Uncyclopedia

The Uncyclopedia is the Web's parody response to Wikipedia, the notoriously unreliable but  nonetheless useful user-edited free online encyclopedia that's quite popular among the online community in Japan. (I forget the exact numbers, but a much higher ratio of Japanese people use Wikipedia than do Americans.) The Uncyclopedia's logo is a broken potato named Sophia. And if you go to the Japanese main page but you don't read any Japanese, you get this message that links you to the English page:

For non-Japanese-speekers: Use the fackin' Engrish varsion, you freaking BAKA!

Hahahaha....

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. 

Buy A Big Mac With Your Cell Phone

Cell phone company NTT DoCoMo is collaborating with McDonald's to promote the use of "osaifu keitai" to buy Chicken McNuggets and Hot Apple Pies. What this means is that we'll be seeing a lot of cross-pollinated promotional campaigns on the streets, as well as more young people scanning their cell phones at McDonald's counters to pay for their junk food fixes.

Link

Will MySpace Kick Mixi's Ass? Prez Says No.

Mixi's not scared of MySpace or YouTube. The 3-year old social networking site currently has 8 million members--by far the biggest in Japan--and is willing to step up to the plate where needed to not give up its market share to American giants like News Corp and Google. Mixi started its own video sharing program on Monday, and the president, Kenji Kasahara, claims he's not threatened by MySpace's entry into the Japanese market last November. MySpace has 140 million members worldwide.

My two cents? For the same reason that Yahoo! still dominates over Google in Japan, so will Mixi remain ahead of MySpace. Why? Because Yahoo! and Mixi are both designed to cater to the Japanese user. More on that later, maybe, but really. I can't talk about this at 3AM.

Japanese Entertainers Against YouTube

Have you been searching for those funny Japanese YouTube videos people were talking about, only to find that they're "no longer available"? On Monday, YouTube co-founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley got an express mail letter from a Japanese entertainment group. The letter made a simple request: create a system on YouTube that would prevent users from uploading copyrighted videos. The letter follows the removal of 30,000 Japanese videos in November after the group complained of copyright infringement and was signed by 23 TV major stations and entertainment groups. We'll see how Googly YouTube tackles this problem, but in the meantime, if you want to watch Japanese people flying off toilets and eating until they gain 5kg in an hour, you'll have to go to a video rental shop.

Cyber Cycle Hunters.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of motorcycles are stolen from the streets of Japan and smuggled out to Taiwan and Thailand for black market resale. But thanks to a new Web site set up by comedian Supataro Kondo, Japanese bikers can rely on more than just their U-locks for the safety of their beloved Harley. Currently, over 4,000 lost bikes are listed on the site, and 25 have been found abroad thanks to the tips and pics posted on the site.

Full story here.

QR codes track vegetable quality.

These days, Japanese housewives aren't just buying any vegetable. They're using QR codes to track the path of the eggplant on display to see if it's locally grown, organic, and priced right.

Treehugger writes:

After a breakout of Mad Cow in 2001, Japan's Food Safety Commission began to tag more and more foods with radio frequency or QR tags that contain information on the origin of foods.

When you first step foot in a Japanese supermarket, you might be surprised at how expensive produce is. But everything is so much fresher that I think it's probably worth the price difference. You might only be able to afford one meal instead of two, but at least you know you're not having pesticide-and-beans for dinner.

Link

New software for Googling people with common names.

Maybe your name is Ted Bundy but you're not the infamous serial killer. Or your name is Michael Jordan but you can't dunk. Well, there's good news for people with common name combinations. A new software tool developed by University of Tokyo researchers uses an algorithm to sort analyze the first 100 results from a Google search and sort them thematically.

If even this software fails to distinguish you from your homonymal peers, well...I don't know, maybe you should call your mommy and ask her why she couldn't be more creative.

Full story here.

(Photo: Ted Bundy's immediate reaction to the announcement of his death sentence.)

The Minnie Mouse Cosplayer Internet Mogul

Joi Ito started the first ISP in Japan back in the early 90s, and later, founded Infoseek Japan and Digital Garage. In short, he's a cyber-hot shot. One of the biggest in Japan. These days, now that he's made tons of dough and can indulge in his hobbies, he spends most of his time in World of Warcraft or dressed as Minnie Mouse, as seen in the photo he submitted to the Japan Times for his profile, published today.

YouTube videos trigger phone revolution against bullying.

This is a breaking story of how one online community is taking their own unique approach to address the problem of bullying at Japanese schools.

The two videos pasted here show a boy being harassed by his peers at a high school in Hokkaido. The first one shows him being ridiculed by a girl in a classroom; the other shows him being shoved around by a guy at the bus stop in front of campus. These incidents happened in March.

The video clips, which were taken by one student on his cell phone, were recently posted on the massive online BBS, 2ch.net, and on YouTube. An anonymous poster encouraged all readers to call the school after 8am on Thursday, November 9th in an attempt to bombard school officials--who have known about these incidents for months but have deliberately failed to respond--with inquiries about the videos, hoping to incite action. 8am was just a few hours ago in Japan, and the phones at the school have been ringing non-stop ever since.

With this and the disturbing story of the boy who sent a suicide notice to the Minister of Education happening within a day of each other, I'm hoping people will start to take this widespread problem--which causes more than 100 school-related youth suicides a year--more seriously.

Full story here.

MySpace to launch in Japan this month.

Softbank and News Corp announced today that MySpace Japan will launch this month in a $8.5 million, 50-50 joint venture between the two media conglomerates. Masayoshi Son and Rupert Murdoch are set to meet this week to figure out the logistics.

In Japan, MySpace's main competitor will be Mixi, which has over 5 million users and tons of cool features that make Japanese social networkers go ga-ga. I wrote a feature about it in Metropolis back in September. You can read it here.

Traditional theater installs bilingual text display system.

Starting November 17th, the National Theater in Shibuya will debut its 200 million yen text-display seats, which will provide English and Japanese translations of Noh performances in real time. This style of classic Japanese masked opera is a popular spectacle for tourists and traditionalists alike, but unless you've familiarized yourself with the storyline in advance, it's really hard to figure out what all the gestures and high-pitched moaning means.

This display system, of course, aims to change this. See the white people in the back of the theater in the picture above? If you look carefully, they're actually smiling because, after many years of frequenting Noh performances, they finally understand what's going on. This was taken at a preview performance of the famous play "Tsuchigumo" for special guests and ambassadors on October 31st.

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.

SJM seeking SWM to be sexy temporary girlfriend.

This is Keiko. I don't know her, but I know that she loves sex with good-looking white men under 35, because her web site is an open invitation to all those who fit this category to come stay with her on their next visit to Tokyo.

Keiko is a free spirit: "My parents pay my apartment - and I can do anything because I am living alone. What else do I like? Yes, I like sex! Yummy yummy"

But she has standards: "YOU MUST BE UNDER 35 (I don’t want to have any men that are too older then 35 years old – I do not want my father!) ALSO, YOU MUST BE GOOD LOOKING AND BE WHITE – I LOVE WHITE GUYS. Yay! (^_^)"

Your Japanese love nest could look like this:  ---->

All you have to do is visit her home page and scroll down for her contact info.

Tasty tongue box set.

Here's one big reason why shopping on Rakuten is better than shopping on Amazon. You can't buy a box of raw beef tongue on any major online retailer in America, not even eBay. (You can, however, buy a beef tongue-promoter Hello Kitty on eBay.) This beautiful rack of lickers is on sale for only 1,760 yen with free shipping. Combine it with some edamame beans or fish cakes for a neatly boxed gift set.

 

 

How healthy is your teriyaki burger?

Next time you order a Teriyaki McBurger, don't forget to scan the wrapper with your cell phone. 2D, binary-coded chips now let you read nutrition labels. Mmmmm...healthy.

Full story here

Believe everything you see on the Internet.

The Ministry of Information is setting aside 300 million yen ($2.6 million) in its 2007 budget to develop online automatic fact-checking software, which will sort search results by credibility.

It is also allocating 5 billion yen ($43 million) into a public-private initiative to develop its own search engine that would rival Google and Yahoo!Japan.

Japan is a country of tight state-society relations. Since the people default to trusting the government to take care of their best interests, the usual questions that become vote-swaying controversies don't always get talked about. I wonder what kind of reaction this one will incite, though. The Japanese loveWikipedia almost as much as they love those morning gossip shows on TV.* But they're also starting to dig the idea of open source.

*According to Nielsen Net Ratings, Wikipedia has almost double the reach in Japan than in the US (7 million unique visitors as of Feb 06, more than tripling in 1 yr).