Archive for March, 2009

Illegal recycling of brand bags in Tokyo

The owner of a shop in Tokyo that specializes in selling used brand goods has been arrested for creating and selling unauthorized products:

The man used parts of old Louis Vitton and Chanel bags to create hair accessories and cellphone straps bearing the logos of the famous brands. He says that he was only “recycling” old products and had started doing so at the request of customers.

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Australian YouTuber dances on Japanese TV

Lamah Tautaiolefue is an Australian who posts videos of himself dancing to Japanese pop music on YouTube. The folks at TBS discovered his dancing abilities and featured them on one of their programs. Below are two clips of his appearances on Japanese TV: Clip 1 (dancing to Perfume):

Clip 2 (dancing to Arashi): —

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Tokyo CGM Night Three

CGM night has come again [official site]. This time around, Danny Choo (The Dancing Stormtrooper) and Andrew Shuttleworth managed to get about 200 of the movers and shakers of the Japanese internet and IT world together. Yes, as before, there was Janken. But there was also arm wrestling. Try to not get too close to the screen, our giant muscles may leap out and poke you in the eye.

Here’s my humble vid recap [insert standard disclaimer about how my face scares small children and my video editing is worse than public access cable]:

On Poken: It is a pretty good idea. I think it needs to integrate a few more social networks, but they are probably working on that. Something that annoys me is that the unit seems to be a 1 gig USB (the program takes up little space), which would be useful, but it is locked down, so you can’t transfer files onto it! Major oversight IMHO.

Smartfm really is one of the best tools for studying Japanese, or anything else you want to study. Here is that Poken study list featured in the video; you can just sign in with your google account or what have you to play.

Business Cards I received:

• Storwize. An internet storage company.
• Applemilk1988′s site. A youtuber/gravure model/idol. I liked her hand-drawn cards at the last gathering more though.
• J’s Avenue. A Developing/consulting firm.
• 1Rick.com. Rick is the dude I totally destroyed in arm wresting. Oh yeah, and he does all kinds of things around the web, like writing for Cnet Asia. And he’s a pretty nice guy.
• Meltingdots. These guys seem to be doing all kinds of things with little pixel art avatars and cell phones, and they have some cool business cards. Too bad they don’t seem to be doing stuff in English yet.

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A few choice posts with much better pics of the event are at Kotaro, The Western World, KenLee, Lesterho Velvet Society, Rick, Frenchy (alright his real name is Jérôme), and Nihongo Notes.
Whew.
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Contributor Bio: Claytonian studies the Nihongoes in Saitama and blogs about Japan, language, and news at The Hopeless Romantic.
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Video: Zombie attacks Japanese children

A Japanese TV show plays a prank on some small children who say they like horror movies:

Things we can learn from this video:

• Zombies always announce their intent to attack your house in the form of a letter.
• Zombies can easily be fooled into drinking Tabasco sauce if you tell them it is blood.
• Tape is somewhat effective in slowing down zombies.
• Use plastic wrap to avoid deadly zombie bites.
• Zombies don’t like being punched and kicked by small children.

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Monkeys learn to floss

An interesting find by Japanese researchers:

A research team at Japan’s Kyoto University observed the macaques flossing their teeth with strands of human hair. The team believe it is the first confirmation that wild monkey parents can teach their offspring how to use tools.

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Putting monkey intelligence to the test

Some Japanese macques are presented with hard-to-obtain bananas (clip from Shimura Zoo):

In the above clip, the monkeys must overcome the challenge of climbing a pole that easily bends downwards when bearing the weight of a simian body. Only a monkey with great balancing abilities can win the banana.
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The next challenge involved a banana swinging back and forth in the air above the hungry monkeys. The first attempt ends in failure when the banana falls out of its peel, but the second round delivers a pretty interesting challenge for the monkeys.
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