Been some time since the last idol post and I've been getting some requests, so here's the idol, Kuroki Nanami. As of this post there's actullay no Wikipedia info on her ^^;; So I'm not too sure about who she is but rumor has it she's one of those idols who is married and is basically at the end of her photo shoots, but that's rumors don't take that to heart.
I made sure to add her images to the idol gallery and again, I don't put up any really riske photos as I'm basically just showing you who she is and to show the beauty in the modeling. (I'm technically a model myself...well only one photo shoot...more on that maybe down the road... and I repect other models ..also, Danielle if you are reading this, don't be mad about another idol post ^^;;)
Looks like others can now see what we think. Japanese scientists at ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories were recently able to successfully display test subjects' thoughts. Imagine what can be done as this technology progresses? I know what they'd find if they scanned many otaku......
Looks like some Japanese engineers, make that over 100 of them are taking something many of us probably thought of in middle school and planning on making it a reality. What is it might you ask? Why, its an elevator that takes you straight from the ground here on earth to a space station up above. This is something I know I've seen on an anime or two, the titles just can't come to mind but it appears that this is something that will be started in 2030 for real. The full story can be found here on CNN.
Anime News Network, of which I've been much of my news lately ^^; recently did a report on the current state of downloads in Japan. Some of you might be aware that many people are being arrested in Japan for shared anime via Torrents and other data streams. Thankfully for those who believe in the freedom of the internet (like yours truly) Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said that they will set up what they call "special cyber zones" (or cyber tokku) in 2009 that will allow some use of copyrighted material for a select bunch of people. To be quite honest, this is the issue with the anime industry in Japan and the music industry here. As an anime store owner with my own works as well on my to-do list, its understandable where the copyright owners come from, but I believe some execs in both fields need to get their heads out of the 1980's and get into today. The internet is and will continue to be the number one medium for all our information and goods. The power of viral marketing is something the marketing departments of these companies I sure hope don't ignore for their sakes. Keeping the internet a mainly free zone of distribution can only help a company move their product better. I feel as long as the material is both credited to the copyright holders and is all done in good taste to promote the anime, artist, music, etc, it should be fine to download such material and to refer it (distributed in non-commercial means of course.) I know for a fact there are a plethera of artists, animators, figure companies and music labels that would have never gotten a foothold nor a red cent if they didn't have some of their material floating on the net. Viral marketing creates hype that creates sales on my end which has me turn my $ into yen as I buy the merchandise from these companies for my store and other stores do the same as well. Its the modern marketing arena and if you jail people for being a free advertisor for you than may the gods of shame and lost sales hit your department hard. Hats up to the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications for at least making one step forward in the right direction. It's limited but that's to be in the interest of the copyright holders. Any company that jumps on this will get their payout in the end I feel.
Tell me what you feel about anime downloads on the internet by discussing in the comments below.
Saw this wonderful article on Wired. It shows a list of the Japan's top female bloggers. I guess when I go to Japan I should tell people I'm a blogger, supposedly its celebrity status. Just look at male Japanese blogger Danny Choo. He's been featured on G4's attack of the show twice, on CNN and big on YouTube.
Many have heard of the Maid Cafes in the otaku shopping district of Akihabara but none like this. Popopure Cafe has food served to hungry otaku by cute little maids but while you chow down on some yummy food, you might notice their big 50" TV with non-stop anime and the assorted anime framed pictures. Definitely artwork you'd rather view compared to the weird European "what-the-hell-am-I-looking-at" so-called artwork littered in the diners and restaurants here. These items are normal in all Maid Cafes except here you can dub your own scenes in an anime.! The name of the anime is "Popo no Bōken" (The Adventures of Popo). Yes, funny name but an awesome idea. It's for only a few minutes and the anime has three character roles to fill in. If there are not enough people with you to play the parts, the maids will take the roles. After you finish dubbing, they give you a complementary DVD with all your performances. Yet again, more otaku news that makes me wish I was not living in New York.
As per breitbart.com, for the 27th year in a row, Japan's population younger than 14 years old is very very low. The site mentions a total of young kids is only about 15 million throughout the entire country. This is mainly due to people just being too darn busy with their lives for relationships and child bearing. We see it here in America too. The baby boomers are far more in size than generation X's which are more than people like me in generation Y and so on to the Milleniols (kids born 2000 and later). Cost of living has gone up and unfortunately school teachers and colleges only teach people to end up in so called "good jobs" which sad to say is a failing system since there are only 24 hours in a day to make money. I'm not saying don't go to college but don't stop at getting a job. Getting a good job is only the first of four steps. School barely mentions step 2 which is to run your own company. Step 3 and 4 (having your company work for you, then having your money work for you whether you are there or not) are not even hinted at in even the highest business colleges while the wealthiest people in the world who actually do those steps never finished or stepped foot in college! People need to own their life back or continue to work so hard they can't have a family or life anymore. I'd rather sit an watch anime with my future kids than worrying if my boss will fire me today. The low child population in the US will destroy Medicare and Social Security and I don't even want to know what will happen to Japan if this continues. Don't mean to be so negative in this post but I feel I got to say something because my companies are bringing back my family time and money while phasing out my job. Being an A student all my life, I feel I was scammed into an out of date and failed system that sadly is still seen as the status-quo.
Earlier in the day there was a 6.8 Magnitude Earthquake that rattled parts of Tokyo. Luckily the quake was centered 100 miles off the coast but it a few people got hurt from falling furniture. A 5.3 magnitude aftershock also occurred not too long after. Check out the full story via CNN. Hope my fiancee's aunt, uncle and cousins are ok. Any accounts or other info you can comment below.
Check out this bit of news straight from CNN. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's 2nd religious idiot in command just stated how they are yet again going to attack the west. We heard this numerous times by Al Qaeda but now they are putting Japan in the mix. As both a New Yorker and an Otaku, I'd like to frankly say I'm pissed. I was in my senior year in high school when 9-11 happened and many of my friends lost lots of family members. This blog gets high up in the search engines so if any one of you religious low-lives in Al Qaeda wants a piece of me, I'll gladly fight ~_~. Most of us otaku have something that many overly religious people of all religious background lack... common sense. For thousands of years too many have lost their lives to evil organizations like Al Qaeda and other religious nuts just because they want to prove their imaginary guy in the sky is less fake than another imaginary guy in the sky. Of course we all doubt Al Qaeda will do anything since the whole world has their eyes on them but I would love to see a youtube clip of one of them getting beaten by an otaku or just any random person in Japan or here in the US... if they try.
(Pardon the rather strong message in this post. I will be back for more cute anime girl figures and other cool stuff ^ ^;)
Here's some interesting items to come out of Japan. I got a good laugh at this since I run a vitamin distribution business and I'm a gamer. Cybergadget just came out with vitamins for the gaming community shaped like memory cards called Game Sapuri. From the image you can see two different supplements. One is a blueberry supplement which is the highest source of antioxidants and a ton of other benefits while the second one is DHA, which is omega 3 fish oils which are great for brain function and blood flow in which we gamers do need a bunch.
For the past few weeks I've improved my health by switching to an almost all sushi diet. There are three reasons why I did this. One, like any otaku I'm crazy for anything Japan related; two, I'll be marrying into a Japanese family so I better get to like it and three, I needed to improve my diet. For at least a year now I've been getting recurring migraine headaches. This is due to the stress of still having a mindless boss over me (but not for long ^_^) and due to past abuses to my body with all the places people had me travel to while working a mindless job. I got into the nasty habit that many American's get into in which we eat only one or two times in the day and almost all of it is fast food. First off, I never got fat thankfully. My genes apparently blessed me with hyper metabolism but that didn't stop symptoms like fatigue, headache and overall sick feeling. I do own a health company so I use the vitamins and very healthy sugar-free anime-style energy drinks. These do help but my main meals were few and contradicted the very healthy stuff I was putting into my body. Subway was a bit of help but still not enough. Then three weeks ago I started to buy sushi from the local restaurant near my 9-5 slave plantation..I mean job. Since them I've been eating sushi and even making my own to save money (more on that in a future post). Eating mainly sushi and maki rolls has improved my mood, gave me more energy, helped improve the performance of my vitamins and stopped my migraines. Now I'm no doctor and everybody's health is different but maybe there is a reason why the healthiest people on the planet eat like this.
If you have any good or bad sushi stories post here and also let me know your favorite type of sushi or maki roll. My favorites are shrimp tempura roll and crazy roll for example.
Naha, Japan has a cute tourist attraction. At the Shuri Kannondo Shrine a little black and white Chihuahua named Conan has been taught to sit and pray with his master. actually, conan just mimicked him. His master now is going to teach him to meditate ^_^. Check it out of the whole story here at CNN.
It appears that we might have to start converting our dollars to Yen the way things are with the American economy lately. The greenback is now worth 95 yen and if I'm not mistaken... only a few years ago it was about 140 yen to $1. If any of you otaku keep up with economic news, the Federal Reserve once again cut interest rates due to Bear Stern's fall in liquid assets. In layman's terms, the US central bank added more money to the system to prevent investors to sell their stocks like a bunch of crazy store liquidators which would have lowered the stock market. All lowering the interest rate does is keep wall street happy in a fake sense of accomplishment. For the rest of the country, it means that the dollar, as you see, lost more value since there is more "fake" money in the system. This raises gas prices and causes everything to get more expensive therefore hurting everyone else. To be honest, I'd say abolish the central bank, back the dollar by gold and have banks be responsible for their mistakes so we all can continue to grow as technology makes it that every person counts now. Anyways, I think I'm going to stash a few yen when Danielle and I go on our Japan honeymoon in a year or two from now becuase by then it'd be worth more than the dollar at this rate.
Some interesting news from Japan. As of a few days ago, SciencePortal.jp, a top scientific website run by the Japan Science and Technology Agency released a report showing the cost if the military was to actually make a real 59 foot tall functioning gundam. Based on their reports its about 79.5 billion yen or roughly $730 million dollars. Check out the full story and a great chart of the costs at animenewsnetwork.com Well, I guess a just better become a multi billionaire and I'll be set. ^_^;
Yet more reasons to go to the famous Akihara Otaku District. It appears as of Anime News Network and AkibaBlog that there will soon be two Mobile Suit Gundam Cosplay bars. Named Federation Forces and Zeon, these cosplay bars will feature mainly female workers dressed like characters from the Universal Century timeline of Zeta Gundam and Gundam ZZ serving cocktails and dishes that look like the famous mobile suits from the series. Any Gundam fan would love to go there by far. Just wish I wasn't stuck here in New York ~_~. For those who can get to Akihara without a 15 hour flight would be pleased to know that they will be open any day now.
Starting December 2 and going all the way to December 14th in the Tokyo Anime Center in the otaku district of Akihabara, doll creator Paper Moon will be hosting an anime figure party. They will have on display 30 1/1 figures ranging from characters like Rei and Asuka from Evangelion, Saber from Fate/stay night, Sakura from Sakura Wars, and Al from Demonbane. They will even have some for sale at 200,000 to 480,000 (about $1,800 to $4,500). More reasons why I want a house in Japan.
This is a simply amazing cosplay of Samus from everyone's favorite Nintendo game, Metroid. She put loads of detail in this with all the battle damage and she actually looks like Samus! Complements of Dannychoo.com
Been some time since the last idol post and I've been getting some requests, so here's the idol, Kuroki Nanami. As of this post there's actullay no Wikipedia info on her ^^;; So I'm not too sure about who she is but rumor has it she's one of those idols who is married and is basically at the end of her photo shoots, but that's rumors don't take that to heart.
