sexy cars, credit cards and cute women

At first I just couldn’t figure out why the e-nexco pass, something that looks like a credit card, would use this flash car and cutsey version of a racing queen for its launch campaign, I was so inexplicably intrigued, I just had to look into it!

Oh, O.K., I’m lying. I know, this really is just car + cute girl= boring campaign, and that I just enticed you here by using the words “sexy,” “cars” and “cute women.” Ha, you’re so predictable. I was just bored and I didn’t see anything else really inspiring to blog.

The reason why e-nexco is using this car is because the card can be used as a credit/visa card, but also as a means to pay highway tolls. Whenever it is used, points are gained, which can also be used to pay highway tolls. Drivers need an ETC (electronic toll collection) machine in the car, into which you insert the e-nexco pass when you reach a toll gate. There is no need to stop the car, the toll is debited from the driver’s account, so they can speed straight through — hence the racy car look (no explanation for the nylon mini-skirt dress or manga platforms I’m afraid).

Wake up!

i am going on holiday before…

I am tempted to put on a pair of these and jump out of my office window and into the river…

Concrete geta.

On a bad day, the temptation is sometimes very strong. But these are apparently for exercise. They really are concrete and they really are heavy.

I also really am going on holiday before I get a pair, although to be honest, I was thinking more of putting them on management’s feet and pushing them off a bridge.

I am off to England for a tuneup. Might blog from there. Might not. If not, see you in a few weeks.

luck of the crayfish

Zarigani (crayfish) Works’ arukamo-ne characters (“arukamo-ne,” kind of means “I bet,” “I wager” or words to that effect) are coming free with bottles of Ito-en green tea. Although I have a “free with my drink” flickr site I just had to blog this because, well, I WON!!!!

Last time I won something was in 1997, I won a board game at my friend’s 25th birthday party.

Anyway, arukamo-ne are fairy-like or pixie-like fortune-cookie creatures that predict you good or bad luck. You apparently look into “the gleam of their eyes” and something good (or bad) might happen.

Alcamo (arukomo) is also a place in Italy; so the story is, these little things flew across Europe, learned a new language and then out of the kindness of their hearts attached themselves to bottles of tea. OK I made up the language bit. But they must be multilingual because they were very popular in a New York exhibition earlier this year.

Each creature comes with a wee slip of paper telling your fortune. Mine said “Today you will have something good happen, I bet.” Unfortunately my arukomo-ne didn’t realize that I am not Japanese, and by the time I had worked out what the creature was all about, the day was over and I had not looked into the “gleam” of its eyes. So I didn’t get the promotion with humungus payrise and I still came home to a shoebox.

To see more pixies: www.zariganiworks.co.jp

groovin’ with gap

I’m not a big Gap fan, but I am a big corduroy fan. And already I hear all the fashionistas rolling in laughter or silently mortified at the thought of Gap and corduroy in the same sentence. Well i don’t care…

O.K. I do; so even if most people I know would rather be seen with a supermarket-store carrier bag than a Gap one, I will stick my neck out and ungroovily get into the Gap groove. Their ads on trains are actually made from purple corduroy, up close it looks like this:

which I thought was quite nice.

I liked the pattern printed on the material too. So much so that, yes, I actually went to Gap. Luckily for my Gap-hating friends, the products themselves were, well, you know, Gap-like, so I went home empty-handed.

But still, as far as corduroy is concerned, this post goes out to my friend at college who, after meeting me for perhaps the second time, felt the need to say “Wow, I like the way you wear corduroy pants. I don’t think I’ve seen a pair of those since I was, er, 11.”

Well, I’m still doing it, and it’s expanded to jackets. Bet you’re really scared to meet me now…

yours is definitely bigger than mine

Um, kind of irrelevant post, dedicated to my big brother, whose loving Mum and sis searched all over Tokyo to get a Nintendo DS lite for at the height of its “sold out” phase.

Look! I got one too! And it ironically (or maybe not) came free with a learning English game.

You want it?

x

what the dr. ordered

A scantily-clad nubile girl, dripping with sweat and with enormous fake-looking tits, is apparently just what Dr. Pepper ordered from Rockin’ Jelly Bean Art Graphics (www.rockinjellybean.com).

Truth is, I am waaaaaay past the supposed coolness of Hysteric Glamour and using the Playboy bunny ironically. I was kind of hoping Japan would be soon, too. But judging by the average amount of padding in Japanese bras, it’s just wishful thinking on my part. Even worse. I don’t think anyone is even being ironic here.

Yes, I admit it, “erotsy-pop” was once almost cool in a “women should celebrate their difference and not be ashamed of the powerful sex appeal of their bodies” kind of way. But when the image of a ditsy, bust-inflated woman who is “oops”ing her way through life, is accompanied by the words “help me out guys!” (it’s on the side of the can that you can’t see in the image) I can’t help feeling that a sad, insecure man had something to do with this. And with that revelation, I have an uncomfortable feeling that, in fact, female chauvinism, ladette culture and Playboy feminism were all very big, boob-exposing mistakes.

I don’t particularly want to drink out of cans with top heavy, 10-inch waisted, physically impossible women. But unfortunately I am a Dr. Pepper junkie (actually that stuff probably should be illegal or restricted; I swear, if it doesn’t have triple the caffeine of a pack of Pro-plus, then there’s something quite class A going on there…), so for an entire year, I apparently will have no choice. According to www.drpp.jp, this “Pepper Chix” campaign will continue into 2007, post-feminist or not.

My only consolation is that The Pepper Chix do have hips and bums and aren’t stick insects like the female idols and models of today, who are truly frighteningly weird-looking human beings. So, despite the football-sized breasts, I’d rather have teens looking at and aspiring to the figures of these cartoon chix than, say, the real but quite dangerously abnormal Posh.

Actually, I wish fashion, especially teen fashion, would just stop using impossibly skinny girls as their models. Regardless of whether they starve themselves to stay thin or are naturally very thin, they do not represent the average girl or woman. Such pedestalling of odd figures surely perpetuates eating disorders and self-esteem problems for many girls.

coke goes back to the ’80s

Remember the original Coke yoyos? All those competitions in the ’80s? Learning to do the `cradle’ and ‘walk the dog’? It’s all so vivid to me. I would burn through the yoyo strings, I think I even broke a window once when a string snapped. Oh, it’s really embarrassing, it’s all coming back to me now, remember Yomegas? (’90s.) Had to have one. Mine glowed in the dark when spinning.

I can still do the cradle and walk the dog. The skills I attained in my youth, it’s mind-blowing.

Anyway, they’re back! And they’re not just back as in on the shelves, they are back looking identical to the way they did then. I don’t remember getting them in a boxed set (in fact, I thought you had to save tokens or something, but I could be wrong there), but the bottles are replicas of the ones sold in the ’80s and the yoyos look the same, except for the ‘2006 limited edition’ bit.

This is getting blogged because I get this uncontrollable warm fuzzy feeling whenever the ’80s are mentioned: the carefree attitude of being a shameless kid, a time when Coke only meant one thing, when the music made you dance funny and “Stand by Me” was the ultimate movie that we all ‘related to’ … aaaaaahhhhhh (that reminds me, I still have to check in on Wil Wheaton every now and then — www.wilwheaton.net and “in exile” at wilwheaton.typepad.com — just to remind me that he is no longer 12, and much as I like to pretend, neither am I).

I could go on, but at some point we would run into “Teen Wolf” and Michael J. Fox, I’d get misty-eyed and probably lose even more friends.

good training

A good training rain manual

Umbrellas are part of Japan’s national identity; just as the meteorologists here are gods. For example, if you wake up and it’s a nice day, but when you go outside you see everyone is carrying an umbrella — go back and get the biggest one you have. Even when the sun is blazing and the only precipitation visible is the perspiration of your palms. Otherwise you will be sorry.

Oh and never EVER put your laundry out on a sunny day without checking the forecast first, because that just guarantees you rain. And if you see me putting my laundry out, always bring yours in, because I never check the forecast.

And the ad? Oh right. Yes, “Happy Manners” for the underground (metro). It says something like “Please put your umbrellas away carefully.” The metro has a whole series of “Happy Manners” ads to encourage people not to annoy others while traveling. Aren’t they just so couth.

BTW, if you are into umbrella worship, please click “brolly” under “other stuff”

a plug from robotomi, no adapter

Finally! A really nice book about me!!!

O.K. maybe not, but about my relatives, Japanese side. Really, this is a fun book. Great pics, interesting read. Get it, get it… get me.

See this review if you want to know more: www.japantimes.co.jp

not evolving fast enough

I know this Microsoft Office 'Are you working in a bygone era' campaign is worldwide (www.microsoft.com), but did everyone get their own perspex-cased, perfectly preserved dino-salaryman?

Saw this at a station and instantly sympathized with it.

Where I do most of my data processing is not an 'evolved' environment. In fact I am often hooked up to hardware that, judging from their serial numbers, could be older than myself.

Recently, new regulations have also stipulated that all data retrieval/processing units past their original warranty date are only to be allowed a limited 'work space.' This work space is to be a full arms-length of the data-retrieval/processing unit by four of its head widths.

Luckily I have a wide ape-factor arms length and my head is big.

Still, fitting the decades-old hardware that I need to be hooked up to every day into my new space isn't easy. I am beginning to feel like Mr. Dinosaur in his perspex box.

If only Microsoft Office really could help.