Yesterday I watched this show on TV and now is already on Youtube. So damn fun Evangelion Obentoya san parody!

(via Danny) When I see photos like this I feel that there is still hope for humanity!! This is an HERO!!

(If they would know what TENGA is, I imagine that some US manga critics would start to say that masturbation with MOE and EROGE is bad!!)

Gamer's Micheal memories...

"Moonwalker was first developed into an arcade video game by Sega with the help of Jackson which was released on the Sega System 18 hardware. This game suffered from Sega's suicide battery on its arcade board (a battery that, accidentally or otherwise, renders the game unplayable at the end of its lifespan like Capcom's CPS2)"  via Wikipedia



(pcb via SuperMik)

(via Destructoid - Kotaku) Sano DG announced that in september the new version of the best selling music software for Nintendo DS will be released!

Today comrades @ Gizmodo.jp posted a crazy photo of Amano Ai: she loves iPhone 3GS!!!!
.

via MODELLISMO HOBBYMEDIA

OK, I'm not a big fan of CRAZY JAPAN news but last weekend, when I saw this new diet supplement I couldn't pass the chance to share these photos. Is this blasphemy or this is the next big hit among christian integralists around the world?!

A new videogame museum just opened in Russia! Around 20 of the 37 different kinds of machines are displayed and playable. They operate with old Soviet 15 kopek coins, the hammer-and-sickle emblem of which itself conjures up a bygone time. Visitors can try their luck with games like «Sea Battle», where the player looks through a periscope and pretends to be a submarine commander, attempting to torpedo passing ships. In «Tankodrom» the player tries to knock out rocket launchers and jeeps with a small plastic tank. The museum also features Soviet pinball tables, ice-hockey games for two and four players, a target shooting game called «Sniper» and early video games with titles like «Gorodki» and «Skachki» («Horse race»).

Welcome to play, discover and enjoy!

 

 

19 june 23.30 - Just come back from the Tokyo premiere of TRANSFORMERS 2 with Danny Choo and other  Tokyoites super geeks. I loved the movie but it far, far away from STAR TREK magnitude!! Something interesting is that the movie "policatilly correctnes" changed according to the new US president and now the military loves arabs... Beside Megan Fox many "fan service" scenes, being an RC cars maniac, I love that one of the transformers bots is a Tamiya RC Car (sadly no scrolling credits mention for Tamiya)!

Japanese robot craftman ClockWork created Hina: an uber cute manga robot based Kondo KHR-2HV (it uses 20 digital servo KRS-788HV).

Last monday I went to the Tokyo CGM night. It was super  fun and met GREAT people but  after a discussion about the most sexy gravure idol in Japan the Social Evangelist Paul Papadimitriou grabbed Danny's lightsaber and tryed to kill me...
I've been lucky since put the saber on safe mode so Paul could really kill me but anyway the super photographer Jonny Li was there and snapped these photos so that Phoenix Wright will be able to solve the case without much trouble...
.

The Orbital Pretty mook published by Sansai Books is out! Finally Moe meets Space! Moelicious!!!

|=----------------------------------------------------------------------=|
|=-------------------------=[ Introduction ]=---------------------------=|
|=----------------------------------------------------------------------=|
|=------------------=[ By The Circle of Lost Hackers ]=-----------------=|
|=----------------------------------------------------------------------=|


Let's imagine a man, sitting on the Moon and looking down to this
75%-water-25%-ground Planet. He doesn't know anything about us. Neither we
do about him, but that's another story, maybe another Intro.

He sees this Internet madness going on down there. He sits and watches.

"This is not different from your favourite bar", a guy behind our man says
in a smile.

Down there a bunch of bar tenders provides connections to everybody. They
earn their life out of that, so every so often they just scrappy down
their service. There's water in my drink, sir, and there's a strange rate
of packet loss on my P2P traffic. There are a bunch of gangsters: they
want to control the business, they want to know who does what and they try
to shut down whoever is not okay with that. We have cleaned their faces,
put them on TV and we keep on calling them politicians. Good luck with
your laws, we'll find our way out, somehow. There are beautiful girls,
there are married couples, there are young guys, there are usual and
occasional customers. Everybody is down there, everybody has his own
chance to tell his story. If you're getting to this bar for the first
time, you might spot some guys that are just different. You can't say why,
but there's something. It doesn't matter if they are married, young, old,
musicians, workers, even bartenders, this is just the outside. There's
another life, behind that, it's now so-damn-clear that they're just trying
to keep a balance with it.

"You used to be one of them, didn't you ?"

Our man-on-the-moon asks, looking at the guy. But there's no need of an
answer, he is just different. You can't say why, but there's something.
Somebody once told me that Heaven is on the Moon.

"What's your name again ?"
"Cliph."

[ I don't know in what you believe or even if you believe. In the end, it
doesn't really matter. This is not a story about science or religion or
humanity, this is a Good-Bye. To a friend.. ]

http://phrack.org/
.

Yesterday I went to the Otaku Encyclopedia party with Danny Choo and his CGM comrades held by Kodansha in "Steven Nagata land" (that's how Danny renamed Akiba)! This new book is written by the real super saiyan Patrick W. Galbraith and will be out in october so don't forget to reserve your copy!!

Me drinking beer @ the party photo taken by Super Steven Nagata!

Twitter summary: @dannychoo  @kenbrady  @papadimitriou @stevenagata @jonnyli @drzuco @frankiebit @imorpheus

www.geeksonaplane.com

My comrades at Hobibox Ltd just informed me that the legendary Yaoi videogame illustrator Chinatsu Kurahana (Tatana Kana) is going to the AnimeExpo 2-5 July in Los Angeles.  This will be a great chance to meet one of the most famous Japanese yaoi artist.

Chinatsu Kurahana official website.
.

AKIBA - Seems that there is a call for boycott www.tbs.co.jp who is giving an example of GREAT journalism broadcasting fake news and helping the nice ladies @ Equality Now  ( info@equalitynow.org ) to spread their message of love and respect...
Now I'm wondering if anime/game companies will have the guts to work together with TBS in the future if the Otaku community will not watch that TV channel and buy advertised products...

You can contact TBS here:

http://www.tbs.co.jp/contact/

http://www.bpo.gr.jp/audience/send/index.html

Ai chan has been interviewed by the weekly super magazine FAMITSU (just scroll down to check the scan of the page), and now here a  video too..

Il paese piu' bello del mondo: O sole Mio...

(Minami Itariajin shooting game daisuki!!)

On april issue of the Japanese cult videogame magazine GameLabo you can find my new monthly column about underground videogaming in Europe. I write for several magazines (beside the ones I directly publish) but writing for GameLabo is something really special for me since I'm a big fan of this videogame hacking publication since the mid nineties (yes I know, back then it was more deep and hardware hacking oriented but that's another thread...). 

Today I bought the latest issue of Famitsu and found the interview to my old friend Amano Ai!! Congratulations!! She is a really cool photographer and gravure idol!!
^_^

Brian @ Kotaku posted about the Cave's revolutionary new revenue sharing marketing for upcoming Arcade PCBs. Basically CAVE will provide free games to game centers willing to share the revenues coming from the games. It's a really interesting approach and I'm really curious how JAMMA association fits in since this Japanese association, with its high license costs (yes you need to pay em to distribute ana arcade game in Japan), is partly responsible for the decline of the arcade market in Japan... I suppose that the license cost is based on a % of the PCB price so CAVE probably is trying to bypass the JAMMA license fees...  The first revenue sharing game wil be DEATHSMILES 2.  I'm also curios if this announcement is in some way connected by the suddenly choise of the cult game center in Shinjuku MIKADO to remove EVERY Cave game... hmm... but probably this is just a shooting gamer paranoia...

Next year there will be another (and probably more revolutionary) announcement that will influence a lot, and possibily revive, the Japanese arcade business but since I'm under NDA I can't reveal anything...
.

As a preview for the upcoming Shizuoka Hobby Show 2009 HPI RACING just revealed a new ITASHA RC CAR dedicated to “Shakugan no Shana” (spotted by modellismo Hobby Media).

This “Shakugan no Shana” car is based on the  HPI E10 chassis. The E10 is a four-wheel drive, factory-assembled, fully prepared 1/10th scale RC car from the same world-renowned HPI design team that is famous for user friendliness, racer appeal and usability.
In each box there will be two decals sets dedicated to the manga version and to the anime version.
If you are interested by real itasha you shouldn't miss the new  Itasha Club mook!

 

 

 

Last thursday I went to the legendary TOKYO CGM NIGHT (Consumer Generated Media) organized by Danny Choo  and Andrew. It has been a really great "tech aperitivo" and, while sipping a decent Jin Tonic, I had a long chat with cool new friends like Ken Lee, Jhonny Li, Yang Yang (Appliya), Daniel Fath, Rob from "POKEN", Hironoshin (digicraft), Shingo from Kotobukya and many others interesting tokyotes... Danny coorganized a perfect techy night, my only suggestion for the next Episode is to have an after event and be able to dance to some electro and techno to digest all the informations and develop freindship trough trance...   but that's just me being an ex techno musician and still full time weekender...

(photo by Ken Lee)

The trailer of the second movie of the "Oneechanbara" movie series is online! The new sexy samurai eiga will be starred by several gravure idols (Yu Tejima, Akari Ozawa and Rika Kawamura) so the "visuals" will be even better than the first episode...

After the Wii Fit and the legendary Billy's Bootcamp now Japanese otaku got a new workout helper:  HINAKO TRAINING, a DVD featuring MOE anime character as the trainer. This year I think I will workout too to prepare to summer stalking marathon at local pool! ^_^'

Spotted by DarkHorse @ Gigazine.net

After the ubergeek retro technology set Wire Recorder di Poulsen Gakken is going to release the GMC4: a 4 BIT COMPUTER (with a crash course to 4 bit programming) covermounted to the Volume 24 of the Otona no Kagaku magazine that will be out in June.

Via: Nerd With Swag  A man from Ibaraki ken spent 11 years building this eleven meters long funtioning robot!!
.

Today is 4:20 so.... it's Marijuana Day!!! Wear a weed shirt but do not smoke since it's illegaaaaal almost everywhere !!!!!!!

From Wikipedia:

"a group of teenagers at San Rafael High School in San Rafael, California, United States in 1971. The teens would meet after school at 4:20 p.m. to smoke marijuana at the Louis Pasteur statue. The exact time was chosen because that was the time that afternoon detention was dismissed. By extension April 20 ("4/20" in U.S. date notation) has evolved into a counterculture holiday, where people gather to celebrate and consume cannabis. In some locations this celebration coincides with Earth Week".


Via Gizmodo
.

BrewTroller is an Open Surce project made for home-brewer  who want to get a more sophisticated brew process. It is based on the Sanguino similar to the cult Italian Arduino PCB). Seems perfect to brew some Japanse beer in Akiba....

Darkhorse from Gigazine.net discovered a great new toy from BANDAI: "Nagashi Somen Somen-Ya" from Cook Joy Series! I love some and this ide is simply great for summer vacation in Tokyo!! I'm just worried that I will not be able to catch the somen after few bins of Kirin!

Today Genterprise released Super Auto Salon for Nintendo DS: pimp my ride for gamers and otaku!    Takuya and Erika Hayama are two tuning freaks who try to be on top of the tuning community. Looks cool but I still have to find out if there are any itasha mod in this simulation game...

Hhehehehe!!

Our friend Ai chan just received the "poster treatment". If you (like us) are in love with this super geek and sexy Japanese cutie click here and invest some yen in REAL SIZE  Amano Ai poster!!

Who said GOD desn't love technology?!  Go to Ebay and save your techno soul!!! Halleluya!!

.

Timothy R. Gleason, Ph.D , an american university professor, wrote an essay on Julie and Mariko Mori photos. The Paper was presented at the annual convention of ACEJMC on August 6, 2008:

http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/7/0/9/4/pages270944/p270944-1.php

Roppongi Hills (Tokyo) has been invaded by a breathing giant robot!!