Pink Tentacle has a great round-up of sci-fi art by Japanese illustrator Shusei Nagaoka, who created several classic album covers including the 1977 album “Out of the Blue” by Electric Light Orchestra (ELO).

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Violet Blue directs our attention to a bizzare Chinese infomercial for “She’s Mine!”, an inflatable bra that helps “grow” breasts using advanced “God’s Hand” technology developed in Japan.

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Tsuburaya Productions has released a video of their new Gomora animatronic monster suit being tested out in a parking lot. Gomora is one of the Dekaiju featured in the Japanese television series Ultraman.

via Pink Tentacle

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guest post by Laszlo Thoth

A good friend living in Japan recently asked the twitterverse whether American Burger Kings would be selling the Windows 7 Whopper in America. In 140 characters it can be hard to tell whether someone is joking, but this announcement is as serious as a heart attack.

In an unusual cross-marketing campaign, Microsoft and Burger King Japan are offering the Windows 7 Whopper during the week of October 22-28 to celebrate the release of Windows 7. Measuring 13cm (5.1 inches) in diameter, the “Amerikanbanzu” (”supergiant”) Windows 7 Whopper features up to seven 113 gram (¼ pound) beef patties totaling 1.75 pounds. The first 30 customers can purchase a Windows 7 Whopper for the special price of ¥777 ($8.49), regular price ¥1450 ($15.84).

Japanese fast food restaurants are no strangers to bizarre marketing campaigns. A few years ago McDonalds introduced their similarly outrageous Mega Mac in a hip, elaborately choreographed, and wildly successful guerrilla marketing campaign.

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An Alien Squid makes an appearance in the trailer for the new Japanese film “It’s On Me” (Watashi Dasuwa) by Yoshimitsu Morita. The film was shot in Hakodate, Japan, a city known for its obsession with squid. The Alien Squid cameo is part of a promotion for Hakodate’s Giant Robot vs. Alien Squid tourism campaign.

via Pink Tentacle

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A captivating video of some extremely bizarre slow motion running in Japan.

The song in the video is “Luv (sic) pt.? 2″ by Nujabes.

via Urlesque

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Yanobe Kenji created “Lucky Dragon”, a boat featuring an amazing animatronic fire-breathing dragon sculpture, for the Aqua Metropolis festival in Osaka, Japan.

photo via Yanobe Kenji

via Pink Tentacle

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A cool animated video for Google Street View by Google Japan.

via Boing Boing

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This Japanese designer enables juice boxes to express their nature…

Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa has created a series of creative fruit juice packages that have the look and feel of the fruit they contain.

Naoto Fukasawa worked for design firm IDEO for many years and headed their Japanese office. Since he left he has designed furniture, a CD player for Japanese waste-not minimalists MUJI, and had published a book of his work.

His design approach is influenced by an Eastern philosophy called hari (which involves concepts of “tension” and being “well balanced”). In a 2007 interview Fukasawa says:

In product design, hari is about finding the most suitable shape to express an object, or rather for the object to express itself.

More on hari and Fukasawa’s thoughts on design in this September 2008 interview.

via Toxel.com

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photo by Shuichi Aizawa

photo by AppuruPai

A giant 59′ tall Gundam robot has arrived in Tokyo overlooking Odaiba Island to help promote their bid for the 2016 Olymics.

via Flickr Blog

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The Fukitorimushi, which roughly translates to “wipe-up bug,” is an autonomous cleaning bot that crawls around and cleans your floors. Unlike the Roomba, which gracefully glides across surfaces, the Fukitorimushi has a distinct inch-worm-esque crawl that drags its belly across your floor.

The robot’s features include a space-age nano-fiber called Nanofront that is especially absorbent of liquids and particles. As such, its debut was not at a robot fair, but rather than the Tokyo Fiber Senseware Expo. While the fiber may be the technological break though, the robotics are rather excellent as well. The bot can sense a distinctly dirty patches and will then take extra care to clean the offending areas before returning to its charger. And it is cute, too!

According to its creators, Fukitorimushi is also designed to engage the emotions and foster a closer relationship between humans and machines. The way the machine creeps across the floor may seem a little strange at first, but the designers say people tend to grow fond of the robotic creature after watching it for a while. In addition, the owner must periodically replace Fukitorimushi’s nanocloth cover with a clean one. The designers suggest this task of looking after the Fukitorimushi may encourage a pet-like affection for the machine.

The Fukitorimushi is merely a proof-of-concept bot right now, and it is unclear if there are plans for consumer release.

via Pink Tentacle

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photo by Nemo’s Great Uncle

Kanamara Matsuri is a Shinto Festival of the Steel Phallus that takes place each Spring in Kawasaki, Japan. The origins of this festival stem from an innkeepers daughter who had the misfortune of having a demon with sharp teeth fall in love with her. As demons are wont to do, the little bastard decided to take up residency in her vagina, and then wield his sharp teeth against the innkeeper’s daughter’s male companions. Enter Hero Blacksmith who crafted a fine steel phallus, which broke the poor demon’s teeth.

photo by Jordon Cheung

Nowadays, the festival focuses on the more general theme of sexual safety and sex worker safety. The festival is also used to raise money for HIV/AIDS research. Causes we all can get *ahem* behind.

Here are more photos of the festival from Akademi Fantasia Travel Blog.

photo by Héctor Ratia

Jokes aside, we here in San Francisco have plenty of our own sex-positive festivals, but I still feel that we will be trailing Japan in the Awesome Party category until we get our own Squid Festival.

See Previously: Squid vs. Robots Featured in Hakodate, Japan Tourism Videos

via Akademi Fantasia Travel Blog

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“Giant Torayan”, a massive fire breathing baby robot created by sculptor Kenji Yanobe was recently on display in Tokyo’s Roppongi district as part of Roppongi Art Night.

via Pink Tentacle

photo via Pink Tentacle

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Pink Tentacle has a great post about a fantastic series of Hakodate, Japan tourism videos that feature alien squid invading Hakodate by hijacking a giant mechanical squid fighting landmarks turned into giant robots that are called into action to defend the city.

Hakodate is known for it’s squid culture and every August they celebrate the squid with citizens doing the Ika-odori (Squid Dance) as part of the Hakodate Port Festival.

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Here’s a video of the Star Wars theme song with Japanese lyrics as sung by Masato Shimon. AltJapan has more on the video, including a partial translation of the lyrics.

Of course this is reminiscent of the legendary Saturday Night Live sketch featuring Bill Murray as Nick Winter performing his lounge version of “Star Wars”.

via Scott Simpson

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Anna has been making her boyfriend Derek a really creative series of Bento Box art, including a Wall-E version and another commemorating Katamari Damacy.

photos by Derek

via Make

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From Reuters comes this short report on a beetle-wrestling tourney where kids coach (like Burgess Meredith for these bugs) and prod the insect gladiators onward. The Don King of the beetle brawl chimes in that this event is great for kids, getting them out of video games cuz “Rhino Beetles are so analog”. Cute huh? Standard News of the weird material, right? End of story?

As usual, scratch the surface and find there’s much more here than fits the soundbyte.

Firstly the Rhino Beetle (and more specifically the Asian variant, aka Kabutomushi, spoken of here) is the strongest creature based on proportional strength on the planet (sorry, Ant Man).

A little less feel good than the Reuters story is this video (also narrated by a British female, though thankfully in a more modulated voice), a mini nature documentary on the real world sumo habits of the creature. This fighting thing is all about mating, of course.

And secondly, turns out this Beetle Battle meme is already full-on rampant in Japanese pop culture appearing in anime, toy, video / collectible card game, even robot kit forms as well. So this analog version actually follows the heels of multiple media.

Though not always noted as such, Bombshell of the Transformers is a Rhino Beetle.

There was even a Fox Kids TV show called Big Bad Beetleborgs so beetle-mania is not strictly Nippon-centric, though that show was made by recycling footage from a Japanese show.

If that weren’t already too much there’s a frickin crazy Japanese Bug Fights website with all manner of little creatures going intensely um bug-o a bug-o there are 30 of these up now, including the below featuring our friend the rhino beetle

In fact insect fighting is a whole huge world unto itself.

See Previously:

- Beautiful Larva Candy, Hand Made by Komatsuya in Japan

- Green Porno, Films by Isabella Rossellini on the Sex Life of Insects

- Millimeters Matter, Tossing Tiny Pies at Insects

images from ToyboxDX, Wikipedia, toyarchive.com

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