Today, the Japanese tech giant Hitachi announced a contract to build two of the fastest elevator in the world for a forthcoming skyscraper in China. Seems innocuous enough, right? But buried within the press release are a few fascinating details that illustrate how China’s skyscraper boom is affecting the global economy—including the fact that it bought a whopping 60 percent of all elevators sold in 2013.
Would you get paid to act as a third passenger in a vehicle so the car could drive into a congestion-restricted area? How about signing up to pack people into crowded subway cars? Dress up as a zebra and walk the streets, preventing cars from running red lights?
While looking at the Star Soldius t-shirt, I stumbled upon another homage to classic video games, and from a Japanese artist as well. It’s a collection of Famicom cartridge pin badges.
Ketchuparts’ collection will consist of 15 pin badges. I’m not entirely certain, but I think they’re based on Famicom launch games.
Each pin badge costs ¥800 (~$8 USD). Press your browser firmly into your computer and head to Ketchuparts’ online shop, Meteor or Frog Port to get the pins. It seems like Ketchuparts has yet to release all the pin badges so keep checking back on those stores if you want to get them all.
We know that Pokemon is a pretty big deal in Japan. Not only do they have Pokemon-themed airplanes, they also have Pokemon Centers, and recently it was revealed that by attending a Japanese football match, attendees had the chance of winning themselves a limited edition Pokemon-themed 3DS XL.
Well it looks like the Pokemon promotions are set to continue because in conjunction with Pokemon the Movie: Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction, it looks like moviegoers will be able to redeem themselves a couple of Pokemon characters that they can add to their Pokemon X and Y collection.
The first Pokemon that gamers can redeem would be Diancie, for obvious reasons. The Diancie Pokemon will be at level 50 and will come with the Diamond Storm, reflect, Moonblast, and Return set of moves. The next character, Darkrai, will be available to moviegoers who book tickets in advance for the movie.
The Darkrai character will come with its own set of moves that includes Dark Void, Dark Pulse, Phantom Force, and Dream Eater. Unfortunately there was no mention as to whether a similar promotion will be offered to Pokemon gamers in other parts of the world, but in the meantime it looks like it will be a Japan-exclusive.
Pokemon the Movie: Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction is currently pegged for a release in Japan’s cinemas on the 19th of July.
Pokemon Fans In Japan Will Get Two Characters For Watching The Movie , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Gaming, Japan, pokemon,
Japanese urban art shop Mountain Graphics pays tribute to its country’s honored tradition of shoot ‘em ups with this in your face amalgam. How many games can you identify? I see Twinbee, Star Force, Gradius and Xevious. Are Raiden and DoDonPachi here somewhere?
Mountain Graphics is selling the Star Soldius t-shirt for ¥4,500 (~$44 USD). I’m not sure if the shop ships its items outside Japan, but if it doesn’t you can always use middlemen like White Rabbit Express to get the shirt for you.
[via Attract Mode]
Japan is the king of weird vending machines. The country has over 5.6 million of them. They sell booze, eggs, crabs and even cars and undies. If you can think it up, they have a vending machine for it. Now a vending machine selling ice cream by Seventeen Ice will make you dance for your ice cream.
The company has developed a vending machine that dispenses ice cream only when the user dances. You might as well get some exercise since you are eating junk.
It is similar to the Dance Dance Revolution arcade game. The user will have to dance to any of the 17 choreographed videos stored on the machine to get their treat. The machine will be on display for just one day on April 26th at Marui City Shibuya in Tokyo. If all snack machines were like this, we would all be thin.
[via Japan Trends and New Launches]
If you love giant robots in life, celebrate your love of giant robots in death with a Gundam tombstone. It will be a lasting monument to your life that stands out and makes others take notice.
This huge Gundam tombstone is on display with more traditional tombstones at a Japanese monument shop in Yasu City, Shiga Prefecture. With this big guy watching over you, your afterlife will be safe. Your dirt nap restful. In the future, maybe we will all have cool tombstones like this one.
It beats having some weeping angels standing over your grave. Plus weeping angels move around a lot, so they wouldn’t even stay by your resting place for long.
[Rocket News via Neatorama]
London’s plan to grow up might go down, Elon Musk’s quest to make electric cars cool, and funny anti-Rob Ford ads appear in Toronto. Plus: Learning from streets in Vietnam, Paris, and Manhattan. All this and more in this week’s Urban Reads.
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NTT Docomo Inc. is said to begin offering their “Tsunagari Hot Support” application software, where it will target the elderly as well as their families, and this particular app has already arrived on smartphones from the company on March 25. This particular software would now receive a new function known as “Tsunagari Hot Support”, where this particular service is capable of notifying registered people of how the phone is used over e-mail whenever the (elderly) user uses his or her phone.
NTT Docomo Smartphone Elderly Monitoring Service Launched original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Ever since the Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster that struck Japan in 2011, the authorities have been actively carrying out mock tweet-evacuation-drills and sending alerts to citizens using modern day technology. … Continue reading
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