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Sure, Star Wars isn’t exactly hot news right now (since 1983, has it ever been?), but we couldn’t resist this photo by webstar Danny Choo, which appeared in Metropolis magazine and on Japan Today this week.

(Via dannychoo.com and Japan Today)

Every few months or so, some magazine or other declares otaku "in". But for those who want out, at least imagewise, help is at hand in the form of mysterious author Kuxe’s Datsu Otaku Fasshon Gaido ("Escape From Otaku Fashion: A Guide").

Working in Japan is just plain weird at times (like, every day) and, here’s a secret we’ve been keeping for many years, it’s not the efficient Stakhanovite-filled hive Western myth perceives it as. Slow business practices and bumbling management are the norm (DWT excepted, of course) here, which makes it frustrating at times, yet charming at others.

(Via IDG News Service)

Whisper it quietly, but for folk interested in Japanese things of a cultural nature, Brovision is one cool website.

Guess who we bumped into yesterday? Just Japan’s megastar J-Pop duo Puffy, or Puffy AmiYumi as they’re known beyond these shores.

Margaret Cho has a fascinating post about those pesky "Japanese" gals that keep following Gwen Stefani around. While Harajuku is a very pleasant place to hang out on a weekend, this fetishization of the supposedly exotic and other is a little unsettling to many.

(Via Margaret Cho and No-sword)

Japan Media Review, run by various elements of the University of Southern California among others, is always a great source of news on contemporary Japanese culture and media.

(Via Japan Media Review)

It seems nothing is sacred – now those dirty yak guys are using Akihabara’s finest goodies to pinch our ATM PINs. A recent spate of reports of mini spy cameras being sneak-mounted on bank ATMs here in Japan shows just how high-tech they’re getting.

(Via Japan Today)

We frequently get emails from readers of a cultural disposition asking about current Japanese manga, movies and J-pop music, which we do our best to answer in our stumbling fashion. It’s for those folk that we thought we’d run an in-depth look at one of the most popular TV shows around now, "Devil-wife Diaries", which just happens to be based on a real Japanese blog.,

Japan’s tobacco industry is getting together with the nation’s vending machine makers to deck out this country’s ubiquitous cigarette vending machines with IC card readers in a bid to stop underage smokers obtaining their fixes from said machines.

(Via Japan Today)

Stories about the Japanese analog TV switch off are like London buses: no sooner does one arrive than there’s another bringing up the rear almost immediately.

(Via Engadget and Impress Watch [Japanese])

The Nikkei Shimbun reported at the weekend that Tokyo Tower, one of the most popular tourist spots in Tokyo, is getting all tumescent on us.

(Via Nikkei Shimbun [Japanese])

We love Screenhead but they rarely touch Japanese gear, so we were overjoyed today to spot this little gem on Mashiro Fukuyama’s futuristic samurai suits.

(Via Screenhead)

Quick heads up on a really useful little publication laboring under the clumsy moniker of Akibatica.

To mark yesterday’s Health and Sports Day public holiday, Takara subsidiary A.G. held the 12th Annual All Japan Paper Airplane Championships, also known as the 2005 Japan Cup.

(Via Whitewings)

If ever proof were needed that the world is a crazy, mixed-up place, the fact that Toyota and Hitachi have hopped into bed together may just be it.

(Via Red Herring)

Ceramicist yosoh brings us this elegant comment on how many of us tend to spend our mealtimes in front of computers, focusing more on bytes than bites (sorry, but we all know which is more important, right?).

(Via Gizmodo and yosoh)

The venerable WaiWai column in the Mainichi Daily News has an interesting translated article from the salacious Spa! magazine which questions the value of adding upmarket rooms to the decidedly downmarket capsule hotel.

(Via Mainichi Daily News)

We just received a hearteningly old-fashioned faxed news release from Excel of Mechatronix in Tokyo detailing a system they’ve developed with Hitachi that measures brain blood flow to allow people suffering severe paralysis to communicate.

(Via IOL)

Hey – it’s not every day you stick your ¥120 in one of Japan’s many vending machines only to discover it’s actually someone’s skirt and that they’re still wearing it.

(Via Tokyo Times)

Today, while checking out the downtown Tokyo geek paradise that is Akihabara, I was taken aback by a new store right next to the second-hand emporium Sofmap No.11. The reason for my surprise? It’s a non-Apple, Apple-only shop known to its friends as The Mac Store.

(Via Laox Japan [PDF])

Yeah, yeah – we’ve all heard how wacko the Japanese are when it comes to televisual trash – sadistic game shows involving clamps and maggots and all that – but why don’t the little gems of children’s programing get more international coverage?

Via we make money not art

Time Asia has a sobering cover story this week about the lamentable prospects for working women (and what an anachronistic-sounding phrase that is) in Japan.

(Via Time Asia)

Professor Kenji Kohiyama of the Graduate School of Media and Governance at takes a look at the significance to Japanese society of mobile phones, or keitai denwa over at Japan Media Review.

(Via Japan Media Review)