Category: Japan

Jinsei Ginkou

I love the idea of a toy bank that gives you a visual analogy of how much you’ve been saving. Even if the bank is set to use 500 yen (about $5US) it would still work if you fed it dollar coins or even quarters.

TakaraTomy have come up with another great, wacky product in the Life Bank (Jinsei Ginkou), the riff on the coin bank that the 21st century has been waiting for. The Bank’s screen shows you the life of a stick man who starts out as a poor pleb in a cupboard-sized apartment and develops into a rich bastard lounging under a chandelier on the 500 yen coins you feed him, all the while counting you down to your up-to-Y100,000 savings target. Then you open up the box and find he actually has spent all your money on 8-bit hos and lo-rez champagne. Out mid-November in Japan for around Y4,000-Y5,000.

TakaraTomy’s fusion of Tamagotchi and coin bank

It’s a flash site or I’d run the link through Google or Excite. 

???? – Jinsei Ginkou 

Canon ????????- Paper Craft

Canon paper craftsNeed a little something to get you through the week before starting on your next big project? The Canon paper craft site might have a quick (or not so quick) project for you. Everything from planes to spaceships to scale model insects and all are made from simple paper. BTW, if your in a pinch for a quick gift for the uber geek in your life a few of these will definitely make their day.

[via paper forest] 

Canon Japan Paper Craft

Doraemon!

Doraemon 

When you say ‘Doraemon’ most people will say that he is ‘that weird cat thing from Japan’. That’s partially true. He is a cat, a robotic one from the future, and he has been the start of comics (manga) and cartoons in Japan as far back at the 1970’s. The stories are usually about his friend Nobita getting into some sort of trouble at school or by being too lazy for his own good. Doraemon will normally produce some sort of gadget from his fourth-dimensional pouch that will be the perfect cure for the problem. This inevitably will cause Nobita (or his friends) to get too greedy and screw things up even more…

Doraemon

Bastard Japanese Toliet Prank

Japanese toilet prank 

The Japanese have a strange concept of humor. It must be because of the lack of land available for living on or all the anime that is over there. Whatever it is, it produces this:

TV crew sets up a porta-loo (toilet) at popular locations in Japan and booby traps it with a uplifting surprise! Users get caught absolutely off guard with the ten second trap… Absolutely hilarious!!!A must see is at the end of the video, where a fast boat trip absolutely finishes off all the poor victims!

I mean, if you did this in the US you would become lawyer fodder faster than you can say whiplash.

Hilarious Toliet Prank!

Ghost in the Shell Tachikoma Robot

 

This broke my heart when I found out that this robot is just used to promote the upcoming Ghost in the Shell DVD "Solid State Society". Crud, I was hoping that it was a general release item (check out its specs). The robot, or ‘tachikoma‘ as it’s called in the series, is a police robots that is fast, agile, and sports quite a personality. Imagine a hyper Japanese school girl in the armored body of a high speed, gun toting robot. Cool, eh? Yeah! Well this robot model is about foot and a half long and has 19 degrees of movement. There are a few videos of it moving here and here. By the way, the designer of these guys is Tomotaka Takahashi. He’s kind of a God amongst robot designers. If you wondering why you should go have a look at some of his creations.

[via Robot Gossip]