Japanese Train Station Gets Multi-Level Bicycle Parking
The Multi-level bicycle park at Tokyo’s Kasai Station might sound like a crazy overblown way to tidy up the streets, but the woeful lack of available parking spaces at most Japanese train stations is a real problem. In some places legal parks ar...
Thanko’s Mono-wheeled Laptop Lugger
If you lack the upper arm strength to lug around your laptop, worry no more. Thanko has created a regular looking laptop bag that sports a telescoping mono-wheel. Whether you haul around some ultra-light and super-portable contraption or an 8.9 lb gam...
A Man Needs a Mother - Japan’s Otaku Culture Dumps the Maid
In a cafe deep in the heart of Amerikamura, Osaka, tables of otaku are sitting down to tea and cake with women old enough to be their mothers. Mother Café is an otaku fetishist establishment staffed with women that give off a motherly vibe; maid caf...
radJacket CHARGE Case Keeps iPod Touch Juiced, Protected
Gnarly, 80s surf name aside, the radJacket CHARGE (not my capitalizing) is pretty cool, as iPod cases go. As well as keeping your Pretty safe from keys, bag- and pocket-umska, the case acts as a charger, giving your iPod Touch a whopping 46 hours of m...
Japan’s Stupid Robot Contest
Not only does Japan have a fetish for giant war robots and robots that can take care of its elderly so they don’t have to, they’ve got a place for stupid robots as well. Meiwa Electronics’ annual Stupid Robot Contest is a place for i...
Coin-Op NES Requires Serious Magic Fingers
While a slew of hotels feature sad, generic video game controllers ready to play whatever crappy IP-streaming games the chain may offer, many Japanese hotels were once stocked with these coin-op Famicom (NES) systems. A 100 yen coin would buy you 10-1...
Fujitsu Gets Into the Wooden Laptop Business for Milan Furniture Show
This rather worthy-looking laptop is Fujitsu’s WoodShell. Made with cedar wood, it’s part of the Japan Design Innovation 2008 exhibit at the Salone Internazionale Del Mobile in Milan, an event for furniture strokers everywhere. There’...