Banana Boy, the JAV super hero, is back with his own domain: www.javbb.com
BB on Jav Talk: " I still haven't quite forgiven them for losing the original site. 3 years work, almost 5000 posts, all gone. Some good writing there too; not just the torrent posts but also essays, FAQs, news tidbits, my cure for herpes, all obliterated overnight. I'm upset that offsite backup wasn't considered a necessity until AFTER the loss of data. I've lost confidence in the owners of the site to maintain the forum long-term and to get their members back. Plus, if the site had been down for a week with all of the data still wiped out, I would have thought rebuilding the site to be a challenge. But after a month I've pretty much moved on.

So will I be posting regularly to JAVTalk now that they're back? Maybe. Depends how quickly they build their audience and treat their users. If my site (the one you're reading now presumably) takes off to the point where I feel like spending more time here, then what would be the point?"

Note: Hobby Blog posts are slow since I'm working on a new server that should be ready in a couple of weeks. Gomennasai but the provider who is hosting this blog sucks...

 

(via SamuraiSB)

Yesterday, my friend Sawa from JR Propo, invited my to a really cool shinenkai (new year Japanese celebration party): after a traditional Japanese dinner some of the most famous robot hobbysts started to fight with their crazy robots...  It's has been one of the coolest party I ever attended and I'm really sorry that my digital camera died before I could take some high res photos so I had to use my shitty mobile phone camera...

(via Danny Choo / Tantei File) There has been much talk and comments on boards around the Japanese Internets regarding how police in Shinjuku have been stopping people who dress like some otaku - requesting a bag and pocket check with the excuse that they are looking for weapons. Tantei File decided to put this rumor to the test by sending out Ozumi-san to Shinjuku dressed in camouflage trousers, a bandana, chain and keys hanging off his trousers and leather gloves.
Tantei File who also list what types of people the police do spot checks on - this list was provided by a police officer.

• People wearing camouflage trousers or jacket
• People with chains or keys (hanging off trousers)
• Looks weak (!)
• People wearing a bandanna
• People wearing leathe

I think this is a new low for the Japanese Police especially beacuase Shinjuku is a Yakuza paradise and Police would never stop a Yakuza to check for weapons or drugs!! But, yes, stop a geek is easier that having to face an armed Yakuza...

All Japanese visit almost one temple during oshogatsu. I'm an otaku so this year, before the Fukubukuro hunting, I visited the Akiba little shrine instead of the famous temples In Asakasa or Harajuku.

I just found Ahoaho-expo: a Japanese blog with tons of strange Japanese vintage books and magazines (like this Stereoscopic erotic magazine from the 60s!).
I'm sure that (super retro otaku) Patrick Macias will love this blog full of old gems!

(via Haimaki) Wow! It's impressive to watch how otaku culture  was already alive and kicking in Japan more than  20 years ago when the western geekdom was still trapped into the Marvel super heroes universe...  1985 was a special year for Comiket since in that year Yoshihiro Yonezawa established the Comiket Ltd. to better manage an event that was already getting big and in the same year the female presence among attendees started to rise thanks to the success of Yaoi phenomenon linked to Captain Tsubasa parodies...

(Yomiuri via Zepy ) Game Center CX will be aired live on TV as a Christmas Eve special on the 24th of December. The show will air on starting from 8pm and will feature Arino trying to beat Kai no bouken, which he has failed to finish in previous episodes.
The special is scheduled to run for 3 hours but can be extended for up to 9 hours if Arino is unable to complete the game.

"Japanese Retrospective Signs
This site carries a collection of enamel signboards, which were familiar from the 1930's to 1970's but are rapidly disappearing."

I just found Retro Kanban: a fascinating web site dedicated to old Kanban. The Japanese word "kanban" means "shop sign", "signboard" or "billboard".
I confess that I've been fashinated by Japanese memorabilia since I stepped for the first time in the Nakano branch of Mandarake collectors shop few years ago... in both Tokyo and Osaka there are several shopping centres that recreated the atmosphere of the post war Japan so whenever I feel "retro" I go there to eat okonomiyaki or some traditional street food...

Next sunday (December 2) Meiji University will held a symposium dedicated to new digital forms of creativity. The adminssion is free but an advance reservation is required. If you are in the area, after attending one ot the legendary Tokyo sunday morning afterhours, you can't miss the chance to hear Toshio "TENORI-ON" Iwai, talking with "Rez" Mizuguchi , Wataru "Hatsune Miku" Sasaki and Yasushi Yuu the legendary techno mind behind the Motion Dive VJ software by Roland... 


I feel that if my university would have organized events like this one I wouldn't be a "drop out":  an hikikomori still living  on "dot com"  easy money earned in the nineties... Maybe I could even been a panelist about tripping videogames and triptamines... Anyway, this is the conference of the year and if they would have used a stronger meme like for example "Tokyo Sinestesia 2007" no one would have ever forget about this event called "digital something"...


Featuring:

Toshio Iwai (media artist "TENORI-ON")
Wataru Sasaki (krypton Future Media Ltd. "Hatsune MIKU" Planning)
Takeda twin clouds (calligrapher)
Yasushi Yuu (Digital Stage / producer Development)
Tetsuya Mizuguchi ( "Rez" "Good Rockets" producer)
Yoshiaki Miyashita (Meiji University)

(via 2ch) Next week NHK BS2 will start  a The Net Star: new show (11月27日（火）22：30〜23：10) dedicated to internet memes that usually pass under the radar of TV shows... I hope they will do more that show videos from NicoNico but The Net Star will hosted, among the other, by the super loli gravure idol Kyan Chiaki (official page / blog) and by the meganekko godness Ami Tokito (official page / blog).

Today watching this Miku Chan video (control Vocaloid 2 trough the Miku Theremin seems great!) I discovered Keromin:  an eclectic electronic musical instrument in the shape of a frog puppet. Kero in its name is an onomatopoeia for song of a frog in Japanese (like in the anime Keroro Gunsho). Min is after "Theremin" by which Ithe japanese creator pays homage to the world's first electronic instrument created by Russian inventor Léon Theremin in 1919.
In playing the Keromin, the pitch is controlled with the angle between the thumb and other fingers which manipulate the puppet's mouth. The sounds programmed are those of instruments for orchestra and real frog songs as well as sampled human voice saying "kero-kero."


Like a Theremin, the pitch changes according to continuous movements--the opening of the puppet's mouth. It is, however, easier to play than a Theremin because the movements are converted into sounds in accordance with musical scales automatically.

And if the Miku Theremin and Keromin are not enough there is always Matryomin: the Matrioska Theremin invented by Masami Takeuchi in 1999 (via Gizmodo/Trend in Japan) and produced by Mandarin Electron (video here)....

Similar to Wii "Everybody Votes Channel", VSist is a new japanese widget polling site where you can answer those frequent questions about "Who's best?" or you can create new poll to embeded in your blog. VSist is in beta and still needs some work but I like it.

Let's start with the Forza Motorsport 2 best custom car poll here.

Tonight, around 3am, Fuji Telebi will broadcast a new documentary dedicated to Otaku women in the NoNFIX documentary slot (a cult late night, low budget show). This doc has been shooted during last Comiket (actually I was in the press room when they were trying to obtain a press pass and I happy to say that Comiket organizers are really concerned about Comikers privacy and for TV crews is not easy at all to shoot during Comik Market). If you are in Tokyo area and you like Boy's Love you can't miss this show!

Ops, I missed this great release from the lovely "Kimino Yume " (that in Japanase sounds like "Your Dream". This a perfect name for an AV actress. Isn't it?).

From tomorrow people going to Japan will have their fingerprints scanned and then they will be photographed. There are more info on Japan Probe  and on the brand new blog Re-entry Japan.
This new immigration procedure is pretty annoying but the good side is that foreign business man and (non otaku) tourists will think double before going to Japan. Of course gaijin otaku travelling offr their pilgrimage to Akihabara will not bothered at all as the procedure resembles something from sci-fi mangas and anime...  so if you are taking an airplane to Narita today choose a good T-shirt (no Greenpeace nor human/animal rights defence T-shirts). The safest choice is anything from Cospa even tought complete  costumes could create some problems (I'm curious if they will allow kigurumi or Danny's Star Wars Stormtrooper suit for the photos).
Of course this new immigration system is a joke since foreign yakuzas (that control the Pachinko businees) are already living in Japan and other criminals usually are illegal immigrants that will be even safer since the police will not have their fingerprints nor their photos. Terrorist have always been Japanese since in centuries no gaijin has  committed an act of terrorism in Japan (beside the Yamanote Hallowen Party ^_^)!
Anyway better being scanned than having your DNA registered like in Europe (France and other countries are working on this idea)...

Japan will never stop to surprise me: last week, in Japanese stores, PS3 sold less than Xbox360!
I feel that more than a WII/PS3/360 console war in Japan there is a portable console vs home console war with the latter loosing every week: after the restyle the PSP started to be a good seller instead the new PS3 seems following the path of the first models.
Basically, way before the release last year, the meme "PLAYSTATION 3 is TOTALLY UNCOOL" spread among japanese otaku subconscious  and I feel Sony needs more than a new/cheaper model to overcome this negative meme... the party is not over (the new PS3 model will sure sell during first weeks), but the cake...  (Media Create's Official Japanese hardware and software sales here or on the right column of this blog)

Friio (the name comes from english term " being free") lets user watch and record on a PC High Vision tv shows (ハイビジョン = Japanese HD TV) bypassing the DRM  limits. This means that we will start to see a flood of HD japanese shows on torrents in the next weeks (dramas and anime fansubbed in better than DVD quality...). Friio costs 29,800円 (Yen)  and is compatible with Windows XP and Vista (but still no OSX).

We love JAPANESE POLICE  when they don't bust Swiss otaku in Akihabara...

CEDRIC→クラウン（CROWN）→シーマ（Q45）→アリスト（ GS300）→フェアレディZ（300ZX）→ステージア（STAGEA）→レガシィ B4（LEGACY）→GTO（3000GT）→R32GT-R→NSX→R33GT -R→インプレッサWRX STi（IMPREZA）→R34GT-R

Our idol tomodachi Amano Ai (photo gallery here,  here and here) is the main Race Queen of Exedy (a japanese company considered the world leader of performance sports and racing clutches that was also a  technical sponsor of the Fast and Furious 3: Tokyo Drift movie). You can meet her at Exedy booth at the 40th Tokyo Motor Show booth...  This weekend she will be at the 6th round of GT Super Taikyu series race (at Sportsland Sugo race course in Miyagi prefecture in northerast of Japan) but if you are going to this race don't forget your race queen umbrella since Sendai is very rainy!

A japanese programmer has just started the porting of the PC98 emulator Neko Project II to the "just hacked" IPod Touch (The NEC PC-9801, or the PC-98, is a Japanese microcomputer manufactured by NEC. It is different from the IBM PC in many ways as it uses its own 16 bit C-Bus instead of the ISA bus. BIOS, I/O port addressing, memory management and graphics output are also different. PC98 first appeared in 1982 and many hentai games has been programmed for this platform). The japenese coder tested the game "Toshin city" from the legendary hentai game software house Alice Soft (アリスソフト: the game ruins but stops at the menu screen.

Yesterday at 6 pm MBS broadcasted the first episode of the brand new gundam series GUNDAM 00.
Read more on Danny's blog...

Today, walking into Shibuya's Tower Records I found this pretty cool Grindouse promotional poster for Toho cinemas in Roppongi Hills.

Next week, on 12 september, LAPTOP BATTLE TOKYO will be held at Super Deluxe Club (in Nishi Azabu near Roppongi Hills).
Laptop Battle sees musicians battle it out to remain the last man standing in a contest of quick fire bouts and eliminations. Any style of music can be played and the crowd response influences the judges' decisions.  Each contestant have a few minutes to win over the crowd and convince the judges that they should be the one to go through to the next round.
Sounds cool... I should find my old Amiga 500 (I used 15 years ago to make techno) and partecipate!!

(via  Yukan Fuji) The Gundam IP Phone headset (annunced at the beginning of july) is finally on sale in japanese shops. It comes in two versions: GUNDAM (RX-78-2) version and ZAKU (MS-06S) version.  The software GUI is pretty cool (it puts you in the cockpit of the mobile suit while making ip phone calls and it makes you feel like it's UC0083 again!) the only downside is that it only comes for Windows. Before ordering you need only to choose Zion or the Confederation...

Samurai Girl photobook from Julie (aka Amano Ai) is nearly sold out on Amazon.com 
Seems that the success of Ai chan new Idol DVD is pushing a lot of idol fans to buy her
photobook too. We hope that sooner or later Julie will produce Amano Ai DVD cause it would be really cool to watch an idol DVD  shooted in places like the toys room or geisen featured in these photos instead of exotic places like Bali or Hawaii...
 

We love Julie's psychedelic otaku World. She is our Alice in Otaku Wonderland!

Frog Port is a new japanese retrogames online shop that has opened today! It's the first reasonable priced shop of this kind (almost if compared to some crazy Ebay bids) and there are a lot of masterpieces to discover (but of course not everything comes cheap especially for products imported to Japan from USA)!  Even if you are not an online shopper browsing trought Frog Port pages will introduce to many obscure retrogame treasures...

Julie Watai ci ha segnalato questo poster promozionale delle prossime elezioni presso la prefettura di Yamagata in cui appare il comico Wakai Osamu (famoso per la sua imitazione di Amuro Rei: il mitico pilota di Gundam) che invita tutti gli elettori a aprtecipare alle elezioni.

Thanks to Julie for this news:  Wakai Osamu (a japanese commedian famous  for his imitation of Amuro Rei: the original gundam pilot) has appeared on Yamagata prefecture posters promoting partecipation to the next elections.  Otaku for the vote instead of Rock for The vote...

Translation
SENKIO IKIMASU  =  let's go to vote 
TODOKEYO, ANATA NO OMOI KOKUSEI NI =  Please send your own ideas to national government.