Hasta La Gadget!

When NTT Docomo launched the “osaifu keitai” service in July of 2004, it revolutionized the way people thought about their mobile phones: using Sony’s contact-less FeliCa technology, these communication devices could now function like e-money cards and train passes. Five years later, exactly who and how many are actually using the service?

According to statistics released by Docomo, about 60% of Docomo users were signed up for osaifu keitai as of the end of May. This translates into about 34,800,000 handsets. That number first hit 10,000,000 in January of 2006, reached 20,000,000 in March of 2007, and passed the 30,000,000 mark this time last year. Take users of all mobile platforms into account (AU, Softbank, and Willcom now all offer osaifu keitai too), however, and the number drops to 26.1%. The highest user rates in general are for men, in their teens through 40s, and women in their 30s.

How do brands get in on the action? It’s not as complicated as you may think, but it takes some creativity and innovative spirit…for which we can help!

Sanyo recently announced a new line of batteries in their Eneloop series of rechargeable batteries called Eneloop Tones. Boasting eight new colors instead of the normal white batteries, the new cells look great in a drawer and on the store shelf, but are a bit harder to appreciate once they’re inside a Kairo hand warmer or any other powered product.

That’s not to say these are totally useless. It’s actually quite nice to see batteries that aren’t trying to look tough and long-lasting, and are more geared towards making digital life more pleasurable, even by just a bit. Since Eneloop batteries are already incredibly popular and known for quality, you can actually feel a bit more at ease opening up a device to recharge dead batteries that still look alive in a way.

Sanyo also announced a new version of Eneloopy, their mascot dog that acts as a gauge for measuring your battery’s charge with a light-up nose.

It’s always good to see lots of color in products, and Japan has been excelling at bringing even the most banal products to life by such small changes.

Japanese innovation in telephony is clearly ahead of the rest of the world, but did you know about the coming convergence between phones and silverware that was predicted years ago? Tsubame-Sanjo station in Niigata prefecture is home to an early prototype .

In case you can’t tell, the rest of the final sentence should say “a knife”. Get ready world.

Joke Racer, currently in Beta stage, is set to take the online gaming world by storm. This is something for car-lovers, toy-lovers or just those with a few moments to kill online.

Simply by joining up you can step behind the wheel and control the cars that race around the tracks. You can be anywhere in the world and the driving experience is one hundred real time. There are cars, monster trucks and even a train. It doesn’t matter if you’ve won a F1 Grand Prix in real life or don’t even possess a license. The whole thing is done just by using your keyboard arrow keys.

Although based in Tokyo, currently the opening hours are limited to night time in Japan (19:00 to 22:00 JST). This makes the service available 6:00 to 9:00 (in New York), 3:00 to 6:00 (in San Francisco), 21:00 to 24:00 (in Australia), and 12:00 to 15:00 (in France).

Follow Joke Racer on Twitter.

I’m late on this, so sue me. The pictures are priceless though.

There’s been much hullabaloo around the recent NYT Magazine piece by Lisa Katayama (AKA Tokyomango) that focused on some bizarre sub-subculture of otaku who not only love their pillows (NSFW) printed with cute anime characters, but they LOVE those pillow in a quite literal sense. Well, at least one guy does, and that was where the critics came in alleging that the example given is so extreme that he couldn’t possibly be representative of any pillow-dating trend in Akihabara (much less Japan).

Mutant Frog did a pretty nice breakdown on the piece, and I can see valid points on both sides of the debate. As InvisibleGaijin put it to me at the time (I’m paraphrasing), “YOU get something published in the New York Times, and then we can talk.”.

Just today I was sent a link to Vipper (semi-NSFW) that shows some interesting photos that, without context, mean very little but are GREAT on the web! Did you know that there are now hordes of Japanese men dating realistic love dolls (NSFW) that look like junior high school girls and riding around with them on the trains?

Love pillow orgy! Do you think they ever run the girls through the wash and then randomly pick their new partner out of the hamper in a kinky pillow-swapping swing-fest?

Not that there isn’t a shred of truth in these stories. There’s a big market for anime girl pillow cases, but that doesn’t mean that anyone is dating them or even having creepy late-night pillowtalk with them (haha).

The problem with a lot of these “weird Japan” shock pieces by foreign press is that each topic, on the surface, isn’t all that shocking anywhere. If your average American geek had an Olivia Munn pillow on his bed would he be branded as anything more than a guy who really likes Olivia Munn? Apparently it’s only weird because Japanese guys are buying the pillows, and that fits in quite nicely with all the other weird things that Japanese guys do when they aren’t making out with robots or dating their Nintendos.

The fact is, I know a handful of Japanese guys (successful ones I might add) that simply don’t like real women and claim to prefer their 2D equivalents. These people DO exist! However, they aren’t under the delusion that these characters are returning the love in any way, and they definitely aren’t dragging their love pillows around town with them.