I found this weird mask in the bargain bin of an Akiba used computer store. I originally thought it might be for doing video chat or holding up banks.
The truth, as it turns out, is only slightly less weird. It’s a screensaver from Popee the Performer, a 3D Japanese anime series that aired briefly on one of the satellite TV channels here.
The show takes place in a circus in the middle of a desert (flat yellow backgrounds were easier to render). Popee is a human clown and his sidekick, Kedamono, is a wolf.
Like any wolf should be, Kedamono is ashamed of his lupine nature, so he wears a never-ending series of masks to display his current emotional state. The screensaver mask is apparently one of these — “surprised”, by the looks of it.
Sadly, Popee was apparently a passing fad. It still retails for 6,090 Yen at Rukuten (here for the side-splitting machine translation), but the used computer place had it for 500.
Some friends and I caught a cab in Western Kyoto last week. When I got in the cab, I noticed that the driver’s cab license, which is always posted on the dashboard in Japanese cabs, said something about 700,000 kilometers (about 435,000 miles).
I asked him about it and it turns out he had, in fact, driven over 700,000 kilometers—All of them in and around Kyoto. Incredibly, though, those 700,000 kilometers had been driven in just over 7 years. That’s over 150 miles per day, assuming you worked 365 days a year, for 7 years.
Incredible.
Walking in the rain in Nagoya, I caught this coke machine in the act of rebooting. Two vending machine repairfolks were working on it and got all agitated when they saw me taking a picture. Heaven forbid I should endanger Japan’s soft drink distribution system through unauthorized disclosure!
Update:
jsuen set me up the bomb with this funny remix:
On my way from Nagoya University to Nagoya station, I saw this store. The name translates, according to Yukari, as “Kingdom of Insects”.
As far as I can tell, it’s a bug pet store (click the pic for more detail — my cameraphone, sadly, doesn’t have a zoom lens. Yet.). I am totally going back to Nagoya to check this place out.
(ps — happy belated birthday to patrick.com. Thanks to Ted Warin for noticing!)