In Japan, there are many ways to get your caffeine fix, from Starbucks to Doutor to Mr. Donuts. If you’re cheap like me though, you’ll get it from the combini. When I first got here, I was amazed at the little cans of hot coffee that are sold through the winter, but now I prefer the cold cup-like coffee that comes in specially shaped containers, made to look like the classy cuppa you’d get from Starbucks. They have a plastic top, which is just for show since the coffee is kept in by a foil seal. It’s another thing which has just become a signal to say ‘This is an expensive tasting cup of coffee’. My favourite for a long time has been Mount Rainer. It’s the cheapest (137 yen!) and tastes smooth and creamy, not like the harsh taste from canned milk coffee.
OK, it’s a joke that only geeks are really going to get, but I came across this bizarrely named beauty salon near Spinshell Towers in Akabane.
For those of you who don’t know what Unix is, it’s a big operating system used in many servers. It can only be considered beautiful and loved by computer geeks.
We’ve been getting a lot of attention for Ai’s 2008 Tokyo cherry blossom article, so I thought I’d write a quick guide to using Yahoo Japan and their hanami prediction pages. Yahoo has loads of great content for Japan, but navigating through the Kanji can be difficult. I always use their weather service, but this is the first year I’ve ever tried their sakura map. And now with the sakura in full bloom, choosing where to spend these precious days is important business!
Being a vegetarian can be tough especially in a country where you can’t read or speak the language. At a recent dinner party hosted by the Tokyo Vegan Meetup Group we asked Miki Noguchi how hard it is going vege and what advice she could give us.
I read a piece in Boing Boing about how most of the companies who advertise on Japanese trains use a search picture, with an input box and pointer to show that you should search for the term. In contrast, most companies in the US seem to give a URL for you to enter into a browser. Most of the comments focussed on how this is going to be how things are done in the future and how URLs are slowly being phased out in favour of search. Many mentioned that people now don’t know how to enter a URL and instead use the search box to get to a site. I think the reason for these search boxes is different.
As Japan rests precariously on an intersection of tectonic plates, earthquakes have become a fact of life here. Following on from a series of quakes in the Tokai region in the 1970’s the government has predicted that a major quake in this region will happen—it’s just a question of when. It has been estimated that if a quake hit in the morning in the Tokai area, about a hundred miles southwest of Tokyo, it could result in a death toll of up to 9,000 people. A staggering number compared to the Kobe quake in 1995, which killed roughly 6,400.
The fact remains that an earthquake could hit in Japan anytime, anywhere, so being aware and prepared is a must.
Here’s a remote control helicopter I saw today, which looks like a robot that ripped off James Bond’s jet pack. It looks almost exactly like Asimo, the lovable little robot made by Honda, but I guess for trademark reasons it’s not called AsimoCopter, but RoboChopper. Actually, the C is a bit badly drawn, so it looks like RoboShopper. The guy in the hobby shop where I saw it was really nice, and explained all about the control. It’s able to go up and down and rotate left and right. There’s no control for forward, but when it goes up it veers that way by itself. He said they’re hard to control and easy to break, but still, how often to you get a chance to own a bit of the future. If the Honda techs are listening, this would definitely be the next cool thing to do with Asimo.
More pictures after the jump, including an Indoor Remote Control Doraemon Helicopter!
With Japan being the second largest market for music in the world, talented foreign bands like Monkey Majik and singers like Kat McDowell are grabbing a slice of the action. But how difficult is it to make your way in Japan’s music industry and what is going to set you apart from the rest?
In this season, everyone on the train is coughing and hacking away with the seasonal cold. I’m not immune and last week I finally caught my yearly march flu. So to pump up my vitamin-c intake, I popped into the local Livre Keisei, the supermarket just near my train station, to get some mikans.
Are the city crowds getting you down? Are you in need of a weekend getaway? Make the most of the last of the winter weather and find the perfect escape only a few hours away from Tokyo. Take a look at what Spinshell recommends.
