Roundup

So, in the last month in which I've shown an unprecedented blogging-laziness, what's been happening in Japan?

Well the Western economy is sinking further into the steaming heap of shit that it created over the past few decades, and dragging Japan with it. But I probably wouldn't have blogged about that even if I had been blogging.

Everyone's been going nuts for about a month over a Japanese man called Nocchi who dressed up as Barack Obama and was flown out to America by a JTV network to try to meet him - his attempts were hampered by the fact that Obama was still campaigning at the time, Nocchi's English isn't very good, and he doesn't look that much like Obama. It would have been a pretty interesting thing to blog about at the time. The results were aired as an hour-long special, but you can see the programme condensed to about 6 minutes here (watch it to the end, it's absolutely amazing):

See? Fucking spectacular. No one ever seems to believe me when I tell them that Japanese TV shits all over British TV. But it clearly does.

Despite the economic meltdown, it seems like some people were still willing to spend absolutely terrifying amounts of money on tat.


This is Ueto Aya, my future wife, promoting a limited edition line of mobile phones. Only ten of these phones were made, each of them encrusted with 400 diamonds and each going on sale for 13 million yen. Well, nine of them were sold, one was given to Aya by Softbank as thanks for advertising for them for the past four years. I'm sure she would have preferred money.

Takara Tomy invented the karaoke-cube, or Hi-Kara, so that you can embarrass yourself on the go. It measures 5.5" by 5.5", and displays lyrics on the lcd screen.


You download songs from their website onto a cartridge which then goes in the side of the cube. The cube has two headphone jacks, and can be plugged into speakers or your television.

That's all for now, another update will come later. Honest.