The Japanese can choose from 19 different flavors of Kit Kat, which range from "yubari melon and baked corn from Hokkaido island to green beans and cherries from Tohoku in northeastern Japan to uzu fruit and red potatoes from Kyushu island at the southern-most tip of the country. The Kanto region, including Tokyo, contributed the sweet potato, blueberry and kinako (soybean) flavors." @12:45 PM 7
Japanese Protect Zoogoers With Dangerous Furry Drill @9:00 AM
Thursday morning of the longest week so far this year? You bet your ass we're going to start the day with some WACKY INTERNATIONAL VIDEO. We take you to the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo, where staffers took part in their bi-annual safety drill. What a time to be alive! (C'mon, it was either this or the latest installment from Jim Kosek, AccuWeather's Howard Beale.) Anyway, if I'm police from the Twin Cities airport, I'm booking a flight to Tokyo right now, just to follow up. 7
Who Doesn't Want A Robotic Version Of Themselves? @4:10 PM
Got $225k going spare? Why not get yourself a robotic doppelganger? Kokoro, a Japanese robotics firm,
will create the sitting robot out of silicone with the same face, body shape, hair and eyes of the recipient. Their speech will be based on recordings of the owner's voice.The android's facial expressions and upper body will be modeled on the movements of the buyer.
Unfortunately it won't be able to walk so you couldn't take your double with you to the shops, nor will it be sophisticated enough to sit in for you at the office.
But you can probably still have sex with it. And, really, isn't that the point? 15
Japan Keeps The Crazy Breast-Related Inventions Coming @12:30 PM
Here's yet another entry in the continuing saga of Japanese inventors' unwillingness to let boobies simply be boobies: It's a bra that doubles as a putting green. Knock it off, Japan! 8
Hot For Fall (Hahaha, Get It?): Japanese USB Breast Warmers @3:00 PM
Combining their twin obsessions of technology and lady parts, Japanese inventors have harnessed their talents to come up with these USB breast warmers, which, as you would expect, are at the cutting edge of USB breast-warming mechanization science. Sometimes I feel like "Japan" is one of the greatest, longest-lasting "Punk'd" episodes ever. [Via the must-read Topless Robot.] 32
Let Us Now Condemn The Japanese Sniper Prank Video @1:30 PM
You may or may not have seen this video; it is, as they say, burning up the Internets. Anyway, it's a segment from a Japanese hidden-camera show called "Panic Face King," the goal of which is to elicit a grimace of panic on the face on an unsuspecting participant. In any case, this gentleman, apparently convinced that he is part of a documentary about telephone scammers, is swiftly convinced that the room has come under attack by sniper fire. And the chortling ensues. While it is probably pretty easy to get judgey about the whole thing, I can't say I didn't laugh myself. But in horror. In horror! 12
Mos Def Takes Japan @2:56 PM
Today's Rap Radar posts two Current TV clips of Mos Def in Japan. (One here, one below.) Mos performs the songs "Auditorium" and "Quiet Dog" from his The Ecstatic album, analyzes Japanese society during a taxi trip through Tokyo, goes to a sumo wrestling bout, and falls deeply in love with a blue leather jacket that his brother describes as looking like "a gay Ninja Turtle." Like pretty much everything that Mos Def does these days, it is all highly enjoyable. READ MORE 1
Japanese Pants-Shitting Demographic Expands @12:30 PM
Fresh news from the diaper beat: "In another unwelcome first for the world's fastest-ageing society, the Japanese market for nappies is now split evenly between two groups: the under-2s and the over-40s. In a couple of years, says Japan's largest nappy-maker, babies' bottoms will be relegated to second place, and adult diapers will rule the supermarket shelves. For Japan it may be a bit awkward, but for nappy-makers it is the tipping point they have always dreamt of. Babies, after all, are the worst kind of consumer. They use the product without loving it. Sure, they require a lot of volume in the early phases, but nature ensures that they are soon lost to the diaper barons. With the adult nappy-wearer, particularly in a country with the world's highest life expectancy, the industry now has a customer whose loyalty is worth fighting for." 2
Japanese Man Makes Full Use Of New iPod @12:17 PM
Japan's economy may be in a funk, and its new government unsteady as it finally takes the reins of power, but you've got to hand it to the country's perverts: They are always finding new ways to get hot teen upskirt shots. "The Japanese are tops in most categories of peeping Toms, and here's another first: A Kobe man was arrested for hiding the just-released video camera-equipped iPod Nano in his shoe to film up the skirt of an 18-year-old girl." 6
New Japanese First Lady Well Traveled @9:22 AM
"The 62-year-old also knew Tom Cruise in a former incarnation – when he was Japanese – and is now looking forward to making a Hollywood movie with him. 'I believe he'd get it if I said to him, "Long time no see", when we meet,' she said in a recent interview. But it is her claim in a book entitled 'Very Strange Things I've Encountered' that she was abducted by aliens while she slept one night 20 years ago, that has suddenly drawn attention…"
Meet Miyuki Hatoyama, whose husband Yukio is about to become the Prime Minister of Japan. She has also claimed that she "eats the sun" for breakfast. All well and good, but how toned are her arms and how does she look in shorts? Because those are the really important issues. 18
Our Tables Will Be Enriched With Agricultural Produce Grown In Our Own Countries @11:15 AM
Here is a very important video that you may not have seen. Produced by Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, based on a 62-page report about sustainability and self-sufficiency in national food production and consumption, it's way more fun than it has any right to be. Animated in delightful, Lego-colored graphics, set to a bouncy little electronic number, it features full meals raining from the sky like in Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, line-dancing livestock, and neatly-dressed workmen engaged in a tug-of-war with an ear of corn. If Washington had an A.V. department this good in the '90s, The Starr Report would have been like Grand Theft Auto (that link is not entirely not NSFW). 6
Japan: One, Two, Three Wipes You're Out At The Old Ballgame @10:04 AM
I was admittedly kind of bleary when I read this article on Sunday morning, but in the cold harsh dawn of Monday it is still BAFFLING AND AMAZING. Short version: When the Boston Red Sox acquired Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka in 2007, they shelled out a $51 million posting fee to the Seibu Lions, his previous team. The team took the money and went to town on renovations in the Seibu Dome, their stadium. Most importantly, they fixed the toilets. READ MORE 2
