Tokyo Blog

This site isn’t exactly great, as the avatars you create here don’t look particularly manga at all. Still, it’s a good laugh making one of yourself and your friends. I found I couldn’t easily make myself, but I could do my friends no problem!

I’m a fan of Nike basketball boots. Well, just trainers in general. So I’m interested to hear about a relatively new section of the Nike website dedicated to the classic Dunk series. There’s a load of colourways (that look identical to the last lot) coming out soon. These get previewed, plus you can make your own dunks. But you have to register first.

There’s yet another Flash microsite for Uniqlo up on the .com site (where I believe all the Japanese content has now moved following their global expansion), and it’s amazing as always (from a production point-of-view). It’s called ‘Uniqlo Try’ and deals with their line of bra tops! I’m not entirely sure if I’m exploiting all of the sites features at the moment, as I just navigate through the different women trying to find any that are remotely attractive. They’re talking about how they feel about bra tops, how often they would wear one, etc. Interesting.

I have to admit, I don’t understand everything (anything) on the Japanese Television News. I also don’t find many of the stories very relevant. When it comes to keeping abreast of developments in science, technology and the media I always get it on my desktop. Due to the existence of the internet, I find buying newspapers a bit wasteful, both in terms of money and trees. So, when I want to read up on Apple, or recent developments on the web, I open up msnbc.com’s Spectra Visual Newsreader. I’m no fan of the msnbc network, but I can’t help liking the Spectra Newsreader. It looks beautiful, feels futuristic, and is fun to interact with, and you learn stuff to boot. It’s now the first thing I do in the morning when I switch on my laptop.

I have a SoftBank phone. If you have ever owned a mobile phone in Japan, you will know from the time you shopped around between DoCoMo, AU by KDDI, and SoftBank that aquiring one, the right one, is very complicated and difficult. I found SoftBank to be the better of the bigger companies. I liked the brand and the shop interiors, and the options and tariffs weren’t too hard to fathom. Also, they do a pre-paid option, something that many other brands are making it impossible to do. Well, now SoftBank are trying to grow their brand and attract more customers, and if this new site is anything to go by, I think they’re going to do it. The site is by THA, and the production values here are absolutely amazing, it’s so polished. Thanks THA! Some more Flash greatness from Japan to play with.

If you’ve been to the Sony Building in Ginza recently, you might have stopped in the entrance lobby to check out these cards that you can pick up. If you take it over to the machine nearby, you can place it in the sight of an overhead camera in order to interact with the card! You have a screen in front of you, and as soon as the machine picks up the presence of your card, a 3D representation of the building appears in the area at the top of the card (where the grey and black spots are). Thus, tilting the card means you can view the 3D representation from different angles, and from that get a plan of the various attractions on all floors. You also use the printed buttons on the card (forward, backward, and enter) as an interface with which to navigate through the info. Whoa!

If you like interactive stuff, especially stuff that looks amazing, you can check out any of the Flash work by Yugo Nakamura. My favourite is his stuff for Uniqlo. Namely Uniqlock, Uniqlo Paper and Uniqlo Grid (he also did their other websites for UK, Japan and the US - I think). There are various other interactive ‘pieces’ on his website - a la John Maeda, but before this he also created the jaw dropping ECOTONOHA. There are other people in Japan creating amazing Flash content too; look at Desio, a site for the Japanese 3 storey house brand Sekisuiheim. The production team behind this one is very mysterious. It was won by Mitsue, but I think they outsourced it. You have to try and tolerate the music on that last one. It’s like you just walked into a Japanese branch of Muji or something.

I was gutted that the Playstation 3 seemed to be doing so badly, and that few developers where inclined to develop games for the system. For this reason, I was pretty sure I wasn’t ever going to buy one. I had my heart set on a Nintendo Wii. They’re cheaper, and it would be cool to have one round the flat for people to mess around on. It seems like a console that best fits the style of game found in Tokyo Video Arcades; lots of mini games with quirky graphics, focussed on group gameplay.

Tonight I saw an advert on TV that showed a new game just out in Japan: ‘Yakuza: Kenzan!’, and it looks like the kind of game I used to love playing on the Playstation 2. I used to have ‘Sword of the Samurai’ (UK title), known as ‘Kengo 2: Legacy of the Blade’ in Japan, which was totally sweet. This new game looks to be much the same, although I understood little of the voice over. It seems like a Samurai simulator with lots of head to head battles, but now taking advantage of the PS3’s advanced graphics capabilities. I won’t be getting a PS3 until they come down in price a bit more, but for my friends who already have one (Adam, you listening?), keep your eyes peeled for the UK release!