Google protects the identity of anime characters
Google Street View’s automatic face censorship technology protects the privacy of a statue:
Found from a post about the anime statues that line the road outside of Bandai’s Tokyo HQ. [via JapanSoc]
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Categories: Otaku & Anime, Technology
Apprenticeship of Big Toe P
The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P, a bizarre bestselling Japanese novel, will soon be released in English translation. I’ll let the plot summary speak for itself:
The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P tells the story of Kazumi Mano, a naïve twenty-two-year-old who wakes up one afternoon to discover that her big toe has turned into a penis. Her life as an ordinary girl is over, and a rigorous “apprenticeship” has begun. Kazumi flees her homophobic fiancé after he tries to castrate her, and hooks up with a blind pianist with whom she falls in love. Together they join a troupe of sexually deformed and emotionally twisted men and women who tour the country performing what amounts to sexual freak shows. In the course of her bizarre journey, Kazumi is forced to reconsider what she had always passively accepted: her body, her sexuality, and her life.
Amazon’s US site lists its release date as January 2010. Those who can’t wait that long can order it from Amazon Japan (where it has a August 5th 2009 release date).
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Categories: Books
Hokkaido Belly Button Festival
The city of Furano held its annual Heso Matsuri (“Belly Button Festival”) yesterday. Participants took to the streets with a variety of amusing faces painted on their bellies.
Here are a few belly button parades video clips that folks have uploaded to YouTube:
The second clip is the best. Gotta love those Dragonball bellies and the Barack Obama dude!
{democracy:395}
[hat tip to Ken Y-N]
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Categories: Odd / Strange
Virtual Meats エア焼肉
(screen shot courtesy of CNET)
CNET reports on a new website that allows users to enjoy Japanese yaki-niku 焼肉 (grilled meat) right on their computer. See the original post here.
Now even vegetarians can enjoy the pleasures of yaki-niku. Bon appetit!
Contributor Bio: I am a doctoral student of environmental anthropology currently living and conducting research in a mountain village in Nagano. In my research I explore modernity as it is expressed in a rural mountain community. Specifically I look at national management structures, as well as social discourses, related to forests and probe the impacts these have on local human communities. I have lived and worked in Japan for 5 years. My interests also include Buddhism, literature, music, and mountaineering. Read more at my personal blog: In the Pines.
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Categories: Japanese Food, Technology
