Monkey on the loose in Tokyo

Yesterday morning commuters in Shibuya station were amazed to see a monkey perched atop a departure board. Many people gathered to take a snap of the little tyke before the police turned up with nets. They were unsuccessful in their attempts to snare it and the monkey ran off in the direction of Yoyogi. To date the monkey is still at large! BTW it is extremely unusual to see monkeys in town but this may be a result of a recent rise in the native monkey population.

Liquid metal magnetic sculpture

Sachiko Kodama is a physicist turned artist who makes these incredible moving sculptures. Check out the video that I just found on Japan Probe.

Win a free trip to Japan

Marui is offering a prize of a trip for two to Japan to foreigners who have an interest in the country. To win you just need to design an outfit with a Japanese twist and send three pics of it in. Click here for more details.

Food

I really want to learn to cook Japanese food as my repertoire of recipes is sadly lacking and just found this great blog called Just Hungry written by a Japanese woman living abroad. But it looks perfect for this English woman living in Japan. Going food shopping tomorrow. Yum!

Robot phone

Softbank customers are now able to get their mits on their very own robot phone, courtesy of Toshiba. With their movable arms and legs, they're just sooo cute.

iPhone scuppers the pantyshot

Gizmodo reports that iPhone have given their inbuilt camera a really noisy shutter sound in order to thwart male users who enjoy taking illicit 'upskirt' shots of girls on packed subway trains. Apparently this is standard procedure in Japan which still has a big chikan (pervert) problem on the subways. The post was, of course, followed up by lots of comments on how to disable the noise from enterprising otaku.
As an interesting side note, my favourite Japanese photographer, Nobuyoshi Araki, made a great candid camera book about Tokyo's subways called Subway Love. Between 1963 and 1972, he took pictures of people on his journey to and from work. He's got a real talent for snapping people in their most unguarded moments and, of course, being Japan's number one perv, for taking pics of loads of pretty girls (though no upskirt shots here). While doing the book he got into loads of scrapes with Tokyo's transport police and loved every minute of it.

Japanese graphic style in the West

I've just got back from a holiday in the UK, which explains my long break from posting (gomen ne). When I was over there I noticed how there has been a burgeoning of vinyl dolls and designs that look at first glance to be Japanese but turned out to be made in the West. For example Julie West, whose graphic design and toys really reflect a Japanese aesthetic.