January, 2008
Somewhere near Shinagawa in Tokyo I found a place near the bay filled with mini-fields. The neighborhood can use those “fields”. Families in the neighborhood with a member who is younger than 21 or older than 60 have the right to use one of those two square meter areas. The size is minimum, but I [...]
Is not unique from Japan, but there are so “human ads” here! Holding an ad has to be one of the most boring jobs in the world. Are you feeling sleepy?
Joi Ito shows in his blog this chart that compares how much percentage represented each country to the world’s GDP in 2004 (the bar on the top) compared with how it’s expected to be in 2050 (the second bar). In 2004, the USA is 38.3% of world’s economy, and Japan it’s 15.4%. But, by 2050 [...]
If you like manga then Japan is your paradise, manga is cheap here and there are millions of them. If you buy new manga it costs around 400 and 600 Yen, but if you buy used manga volumes then you only have to pay around 100 Yen (1.1$). Even though manga is still popular, the [...]
Tokyo Midtown is the name of the last “micro-futuristic city” in Tokyo. The construction cost was 300 billion dollars and it opened its doors last year. The direct competitor is Roppongi Hills, that it’s just 500 meters away. Midtown’s main building is taller than Roppongi Hills Mori tower, in fact, it is the tallest building [...]
Found at Kotaku.com a really interesting video showing the video-game market share evolution during the last eleven years in Japan. Blue: Sony Computer Entertainment Red: Nintendo Green: Microsoft Purple: Sega Yellow: Bandai It’s astounding how Sega disappears at the begining and Sony conquers the pie and keeps the majority during many years. At the end [...]
Ema (絵馬) are small shinto traditional plaques that are usually located below sacred trees in Japanese shrines. When you go to a shrine you buy an ema, you write your wishes and hopes into it and they you hang it together with the other emas. Emas are near the gods, so they can read them [...]
Japanese, and also Asian people are pretty addict to energetic drinks. There are zillions of different kinds of beverages. Here, there is a picture with energetic drinks and similar potions in a simple convenience store, if you go to a pharmacy there is even more variety. “Red Bull” is trying to enter this competitive market [...]
