Hasta La Gadget!

In 2003~04, mobile carrier NTT Docomo released a series of “Vision 2010″ videos designed to show the world what the digital future would look like in less than a decade. Japan’s mobile ecosystem is surely the world’s most dynamic, but it’s interesting to see how lofty Docomo’s goals were. While other carriers have different focuses on their brands (Softbank on price, and AU on design), Docomo has long been a leader in future technology such as mobile payment.

Sure, we’re not doing full holographic mobile medical diagnosis in our automated robot cars (and our kids don’t look like Dr. Spock), but there’s still quite a lot that’s happened in the last seven years in the global mobile industry that can be seen in these videos.

Was Docomo too bold in these predictions? After all, 6~7 years isn’t much to accomplish such lofty mobile goals, but it’s a perfect demonstration of how Japanese companies aren’t just looking for the obvious answers.

A great example is the AT&T “You will” ads from 1993 that “predicted” with pretty good accuracy what our digital future will look like. Of course, they were completely wrong about who would actually be bringing the technology, and it’s also notable that even in 1993 they had their video-calling mother using a phone booth!

The Docomo videos are also filled with people doing video calls from all around the world. This is an interesting case study, because the technology and infrastructure to support these calls has been around for several years, and many Japanese are already carrying handsets with forward-facing cameras. However, it’s lack of consumer demand that has put off our video calling future. Even if the video calling function were paid for from the “all you can eat” data plans most Japanese have (rather than as an extra charge as it is now), we’re skeptical that it would get much use in the current environment.

Below you can find Docomo’s latest video (released in 2008), “The Road to Hokusai’s Waterfall“. Let’s come back to this one in ten years and see where we stand.

Thanks to Stephan Kinsella for the tip

Japanese politicians are not exactly characterized as, well, savvy and connected with younger people. So, it comes as a bit of surprise that Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has started blogging and tweeting. His first blog posts on the “Hato Cafe” (with a cute pigeon — “hato” — logo) included his recent trip to India and New Year’s greetings. And at writing he has over 120,000 followers on Twitter. Not bad for a newbie!

What is also surprising is that the blog is designed by Yuji Tokuda, who gave us the I LOHAS water bottle. It seems Mr Hatoyama’s office really gave some thought in to the presentation and style of the blog.

We are regular followers of Tobias Harris’s excellent English blog Observing Japan and his insight on Japanese politics. Whilst there aren’t many other comparable online media that we know of, hopefully the PM’s example will set a good example for other major politicians and political commentators to initiate “change”, digitally if not socially!

Not unsurprisingly, Japanese politicians and institutions have been hesitant and conservative about using online media to communicate with the masses. Indeed, it was only a couple of years since one law-maker got his hand slapped for starting up a cyber office in Second Life, a breach of rules that restrict the updating of web pages during election campaigns. The Prime Minister will have to be careful to play within the guidelines allowed by the Diet in this new adventure of his.

A quick search on Twitter reveals many parody “Gordon Brown”s but where is the real man’s tweets? The White House has a well-maintained, professional-looking blog but Hatoyama’s is certainly more fun-looking. Perhaps if the LDP, now finding themselves relegated to second fiddle, developed their own online sass — then Japanese politics might just get interesting!

We wanted to introduce you some personal favorites amongst the plethora of videos that came out over the year.

The first is this awarding-winning music video for Denki Groove’s “Fake It”, made by Hideyuki Tanaka.

Next comes this extraordinary video by Taijin Takeuchi, composed by filming seemingly infinite numbers of photos placed chronologically on surfaces inside a home…Just see what I mean below!

And “White Box” by Makoto Yabuki makes design work look far too easy…

I need to go and see this!

We had the pleasure of sitting down with Tokujin Yoshioka in his home/studio in Daikanyama during one of our client Trend Tours in 2007, and it still ranks in our top five best creative sit-downs ever.

via Core77

As a longtime user and collector of toy cameras, I’ve frequently come to the point where I question the expenses that this hobby racks up. The cameras themselves are typically pretty cheap, ranging from $20 for a Holga to a few hundred for something more interesting like a Horizon panoramic. It’s the film, processing, and scanning that are time and resource hungry, but I’ve always found the results to be worth it.

Japan, known for its forward-thinking in expensive cameras, has also been doing well in the design department for cheaper (but not cheap!) toy cameras. The Blackbird, Fly comes to mind. However, now there’s an ongoing mix between the effects and other fun you can have with an analogue camera and new digital cameras that can do all of that and more. Interestingly, most of these are actually coming from Takara-Tomy.

The new “PokeDigi” Pocket Digital Camera (the only non Takara-Tomy cam on the list) is a square format camera in a tiny digital box, and lets you simulate all of the analogue Holga goodness you want, plus video, for around $50. Not bad!

Purikura, in case you hadn’t heard, has been a part of most Japanese girls growing up for the past decade and a half. The Love Digi makes many of the features of a purikura booth portable, minus the printing, and allows young girls to make animated photos, add effects, and more.

Though it’s not out yet, the Kururin Shot is all about effects, mostly of the digital photoshop-style variety, but also imitations of analogue effects.

Finally, though it needs no introduction for toy-camera fanatics, the Xiao prints your photos right inside the camera itself, and makes for a great platform for decoration.

A lot of this makes me wonder why these features aren’t already included in a lot of consumer digital cameras. Do they seem too “cheap” even to be in a standard snapshot digital camera? Seems too fun not to include them.