Being a language teacher in a foreign country is never easy, in a country as prejudiced and complex as Japan it’s even harder. Here’s a little video which pokes fun at the ridiculous and uncomfortable situations of an English teacher in Japan. It’s a bit hit-or-miss but I was cracking up one minute in.

Now if you excuse me I have to go call the police, there’s a lood party next door.

[Japan Probe]

This isn’t exactly a new entry in our long series of cosplay sells TV ads, but it is a derivative of one. Kyowa, a brand of backpacks in Japan, is taking a page from Aeon with their latest TV ad. In Kyowa’s ad we see a foreign aerobics instructor doing an energetic routine while repeating a tagline and… weird creatures dance in the back.

Aeon’s ad featured a cute anglo-japanese idol doing a dance along with little kids dressed as bears in the back. Perhaps when it comes to Japan and backpacks you better not mess with the formula. It’s almost like mad libs!

Foreign female dressed as NOUN does VERB while little PLURAL NOUN dance in the back.

I propose: Foreign female dressed as a zebra does pantomime while little ducks dance in the back. I’d buy that backpack! Now its your turn guys, show us your ideas in the comments!

[Japan Probe]

Mark another one that after over a year of tracking went past my head, the giant Tetsuyin 28 statue built on Kobe for the character’s 30th anniversary was finally unveiled last month. No moving parts, no steam, no dramatic lighting. Just a quiet reminder of the founder of Japan’s dream of one day ruling the world with a robotic fist.

I for one welcome our future mechanical overlords.

Who hasn’t had one of those days where a super hero team starts harassing you for no reason? I know it happens to me at least twice a month! This is also the story of Katori Shintaro, who never thought he was a good guy, but never thought he was a bad guy either. Especially not one bad enough to destroy the earth.

This skit came out years ago, before DDN even existed, for completition’s sake and due to the request of Sanime over in our chat, we’re posting it.

Finally a solution to a problem we could have easily solved by now if it weren’t for society’s double standards and ridiculous rules like decency and respect. No I’m not talking about solving unemployment through slavery, I’m talking about cold boobs.

The Japanese have taken it upon themselves to create the Bust Beauty Pad, a USB-powered bust warmer. Just plug it in to a USB port and insert the warming pads under your bra and soon the twins will be all cozied up. It probably also works on man-boobs too but… let’s not go there. Talk about trying to invent a better mousetrap, though! Last time I checked us men still had hands! And maybe you don’t know it Japan, but here in the western world some men are even willing to pay good money to solve this problem with this hands-on approach.

There’s supply, there’s demand. I don’t know, it seems like the free market could have solved this problem ages ago. Perhaps a cop and trade system is in order, see what I did there? Yeah I’m witty like that.

[Bust Beauty Pad / Via Tokyomango]

Our first night in Asakusa was pretty disheartening. Filled with the pains of leaving ‘our home’ and then wandering around for hours lost in the rain looking for our place of stay – it’s safe to say Asakusa wasn’t winning us over much. Thoughts that tended to fill our minds consisted of “This is shit”, “It’s raining”, “I wanna go back to Osaka” and “This is it?!”. But our first day in Asakusa was a turn around a corner for us all. The sky was clear, it was a damn nice day and the niceness of the locals shone through every person we came across. Asakusa is a pretty old town. Much like the kind of place where you might want to retire to, or a place you’d like to vacate to when you’re in your 60’s. Lots of convenience stores, cheap 99 yen stores, markets, Onsen’s, cheap restaurants, temples and no chronic hustle and bustle.

It’s easy to see the attraction to Asakusa when you truly open your eyes and look beneath the lack of neon signs, girls in knee high socks, arcades and electronics stores. There’s something really nice and warm about Asakusa that feels inviting, non-threatening and homely. The only problem with Asakusa, is that at times it can feel so warm and sedate that you tend to get complacent and forget you’re on a holiday, and that you’re in Tokyo at all!

Read more!

Japan is at it again, trying its best to have mecha out as soon as possible. This time they are not going the giant robot route, a la Gundam, but are once again pursuing the power suit, a la Patlabor. Engineers at Kyoto’s Activelink Co. have developed this little beauty you see above, called the Dual-Arm Power Amplification Robot, or DAPAR for short. Sure it needs a better name but it’s nearly fully movable and amplifies both arm and leg movement, enabling you to lift over 90 kg without a hitch.

Yeah, it cant hurl armored vehicles like pillows just yet but they are aiming to make it fully mobile and have it in practical use by 2015. Add a couple of extra years and they’ll have the DAPAR swinging an oversized sword and firing an enormous sub-machine gun.

[Boing Boing]

These above are all of the voice clips included in the Nanami Madobe, Windows 7-tan, theme for Windows 7 included in some of the Japanese editions. Sounds for all your basic windows actions, including the dings, the beeps and the system errors. Boy oh boy, I don’t think I’d mind constant system errors with this. This is the official complaint deterrent for obscure errors only found by geeks, it turns errors into features and nerd rage into a moe-induced trance.

At last, a little update on that whole Kirsten Dunst doing mahou shojou cosplay we reported on a while ago. It has emerged that the shooting was indeed a music video. In fact she was singing the much cliche’d and ad hoc song ‘Turning Japanese’.

What’s more though is that the video is to be part of a much larger film based on Akihabara culture directed by Takashi Murakami, who long time readers might remember as the director of this excellent superflat Louis Vuitton video we posted back in 2007. The film is titled “Akihabara Majokko Princess”. Above you’ll find a couple of images of Muramaki, the first being him in front of a giant print allusive to the film, you can even see the legs of a giant Kirsten Dunst in her infamous cosplay, terrorizing the city. The other image… well lets just say it’s quite titillating.

[Arrested Motion]

Sure the US has a cool president right now but it doesn’t hold a candle to Japan’s Ex-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Not only did he impersonate Elvis on his last trip to the US but now he’s going all superhero on us by voicing Ultraman King in the next big Ultraman movie, Giant Monster Battle: Ultra Galactic Legend. He’ll be voicing the iconic Japanese superhero at the urging of his son (cool dad points too). His raspy deep voice fits perfectly to the King of the Ultramen. Perhaps Obama should take a passage from the book of Conan Obrien and try his hand at anime dubbing. Perhaps he can voice himself.