Another recommended useful site, Tokyo Art Beat is Tokyo’s bilingual art and design events calendar.

Just what everyone needs. . . a 23,000 yen tissue box.

Though this thing looks like a robot, it is not. The only purpose it is designed for is to dispense a piece of tissue whenever you shake its hand.

Available in white, silver, or red.

Via Popgadget

There must be any number of strange arcade games in Japan but this one is at least somewhat strange. But is it much different from the one you see (at least in movies or in the 19th century) on American fairgrounds–where you hit the thing with a sledgehammer and see if you can ring the bell at the top? The blogger, Brian Lam, who reported this particular game says:

The goal is simple: kick the living daylights out of the cabinet’s foam sensor. From skills developed in a former career, I earned the top score. After two of my best kicks, I’m unbelievably sore. The blogging life is not filled with regular exercise.

Via Gizmodo

This is a product that answers a definite need–telling you when noodles are cool enough to eat. Put the boiling water into the cup of noodles and place it on the device. It dings when your noodles are done and cool enough to eat.

But that’s all it does–it’s just a timer. It looks pretty much like the single-burner butane stove I’ve got on my boat, including a fuel lock switch, except there is no fuel and no cooking happening!

Even though it certainly looks more functional (see photos on the product page) it’s just a simple timer. Nothing more, even though has an LED light in the “burner” to glow and appear as if it’s actually cooking something. But even if it doesn’t do anything more than an egg timer would even though it looks like it might, it’s only $8 so probably worth it. As the source concluded: “kind of lame, kind of cool.”

Via Engadget.

Western writers, not to mention filmmakers, wrestle with two well-worn tropes when portraying Japan. There is the nightmarishly modern landscape with a youth culture that fetishizes things a bit too much, and whose inhabitants, if alienating and silly, at least benefit from a system of enviable efficiency. Other authors are so gob-smacked by Japan’s exotic beauty they hope Buddha himself will notice their “enlightened” sensitivity. In these stories we meet founts of inscrutable wisdom, repressed emissaries of human dignity, instructors of the perfect karate chop: nothing at all, in other words, recognizably human.

What a pleasure it was, then, for me to read a copy of Ellis Avery’s new novel, The Teahouse Fire set in 19th century Kyoto and published this month by Riverhead. Avery neatly resolves the dilemma of the “Western writer writing about beautiful Japan” through her choice of narrator. Plucky Aurelia, aged nine, accompanies creepy uncle Charles, the missionary, from New York to Japan in 1865. Vowing to do something about the icky adults in her life, Aurelia wisely prays at a Shinto shrine for help. The gods listen, but the new life they grant her isn’t necessarily good or bad. This is a Shinto divine intervention, after all, not a Christian one.

TOKYO (AFP) – Japanese romantics will have the chance to hear some truly flowery language with the help of a playful gadget purported to express the feelings of plants. Through the voice of a small doll, the device will share what the plant is supposedly ‘thinking’ when a person strokes it.The “Hanakotoba”, or “Communication Flower”, consists of a small rod topped with a fairy figurine that can be put inside a potted plant or vase of water.

When the owner touches the stem or leaves, a small electric current passes from the rod through a wire to a small doll.

“What a beautiful day!” the doll, wearing a green vest and cone hat, will say once the flower is touched, or “Let’s stay friends forever!”

Hanakotoba has up to 200 different phrases, some as potentially uncomfortable as “Do you have a boyfriend?”

The gadget, made by Japanese toymaker E-revolution, is the latest creation of Masahiko Kajita, who scored a smash hit in 2002 with “Bowlingual” — a dog collar said to interpret canine barking.

He said the Hanakotoba was meant to tap a female market.

“I created translators for cats and dogs, which were a big success among men, so I was searching for a similar success among females, and since women love flowers, I decided to work on them,” he said.

“This toy doesn’t use a single dirty or aggressive word, unlike Bowlingual,” he said.

But the plant can still become angry. If the device senses there is insufficient water, the doll says in a shrill voice: “Come on, what are you looking at? Give me more water!”

The toy was released this month at 4,179 yen (35 dollars) each and, if successful in Japan, will make its way abroad, the company said.

In case you can’t afford an expensive designer dog or just prefer cats anyway, the KT4560 Hello Kitty Stereo Clock Radio does just about everything. Apart from being an iPod docking station and charger for Mini or Nano, it also connects video iPods to your TV to show pictures and video, has the ability to wake you with tunes from your iPod, and also has an auxiliary input for other MP3 devices.

The LCD-faced clock also features an AM/FM radio, alarm functions, rotatable volume control, a snooze button, and of course a Hello Kitty with an iPod on top. An Engadget commenter says they cost about $50 and the Chip Chick says it’s one of the most practical Hello Kitty gadgets ever. Everyone seems to agree that it’s pretty useful and doesn’t sound half bad either.

Via Engadget

Now that Christmas is over and behind us, the cake has been eaten, the romantic evening is over with, its time to start focusing on the first, or last depending on how to see it, party of the year! That’s right, get your beer mugs out again because its time for a  Shinnenkai  新年会 party.

On New Year’s Day, a Shinnenkai party is traditionally held to welcome the arrival of the new year which is always accompanied by the drinking of alcohol. Lots of alcohol!

A Shinnenkai is generally held among co-workers or friends in early January and is VERY important particularly in business because its often the main opportunity to solidify relationships with clients and co-workers for the new year.

So of course, we here at Japundit are pleased to provide you with a Top Ten ‘How to Survive’ list for the 2006/2007 Shinnenkai season!

10.) If you think you may be slurring your Japanese, then your slurring a lot. If you think your slurring a lot, then you are not speaking Japanese anymore and no one will understand.

If you’re concerned that your life lacks a bit of Jesus, then fear not – perhaps He’ll be a candidate in your constituency come the next election.

Mr Mitsuo Matayoshi, or as He is also known (mainly to himself) ‘The only God Mitsuo Matayoshi Jesus Christ’ (唯一神又吉光雄・イエス・キリスト), is the leader of the World Economic Community Party (世界経済共同体党), and it’s His aim to take over Japan, and then the United Nations, and then there will be the Final Judgment according to Him.

You can see His stylish oratorical delivery in one of his party political broadcasts, and Chris Gunson captured one of His election posters in 2004, which urges then-PM Koizumi and anyone who doesn’t Vote Matayoshi to simply kill themselves.

As many of the biographical blurbs about Mr Matayoshi around the internet repeat (rather archly), He has “presented himself in many elections but he has not won yet”.