Last sunday I went to Tokyo MAKE Meeting 04 with Gianluca Martino: a member of the Arduino team. He has been super popular and he really appreciated the Japanese Arduino scene.
During the show Gakken displayed the prototype of the JAPANINO (Arduino clone). It will be released next spring in the Otona no Kagaku (in Japanese it means “Science toys for adults”) magazine series with a Persistence of Vision plastic Toy with color LEDs. The price tag will be less than 3500 yen (ca$35) and it will help a lot of people to get into the “Makers” scene. I’m doing consulting for Gakken on this project so I can not reveal all details but this release will definitely make the Japanese Arduino scene the biggest in the World as in a couple of months the magazine will probably sell what the original Arduino sold worldwide in the last years...

NOTE: Arduino team is not officially involved in this project but should be featured in the magazine.

LEGO Rock Band multiplatform videogame has just been released so why not build a "real" replica of the band’s bus featured in the game? You can download the PDF with the step by step instructions for  the LEGO Rock Band bus (FBTB).
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The TNR-O is an orange LED Tenorion cheaper than the original TENORI-ON released a couple of years ago. It will be released on 1st December at half price of the original one. The TNR-O is not meant for live shows and to be used on the go and needs a power adapter (no batteries like the original).  There are no LEDs on the back panel but the TNR-O has the same features and creative capabilities as the original so this is the perfect Christmas present for DTM geeks!!

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I'm again in LEGO mood (I finally found the super rare "Winther Toy Shop" Christmas Set here in Tokyo!!) and I'm happy that I'm not the only one. Dave Sterling just created this brick built replica of the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). He even made a fake TV set!!
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Wired Italia posted my reportage from the Japanese (ero)game show DREAMPARTY 2009 held in Tokyo Big Sight few days ago. This edition was really interesting since there were many itasha displayed among tons of new bishoujo games!
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The Japanese toy giant BANDAI teamed up with cosmetics powerhouse FANCL to produce BIHADA KANTEI: a small digital skin condition checker that will be released on 30 november (suggested retail price 3.570 yen.).
The size of this gadget is limited (924 × 33 × 23mm), it looks like an USB memorystick, and doesn't take too much space in women's bags.  Skin condition is displayed in the range from 1,000 to 10,000,000 and up to 90 days of data can be stored, analyzed and visualized as graphs.  The "Skin Expert" is powered by 2 CR2023 batteries.

Last weekend, during the eroge heatai videogame show DREAMPARTY 2009 held in Tokyo Big Sight, I spotted this really crazy itasha wheelchair inspired by the bishoujo/Moe character used to promote TACHIPRO (Tachikawa Area promotional Project) by TachiTachi.  I love it!!!
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Via Asiajin - Japanese company A2c  released a new iPhone application which enables you to take pictures with 5 (ero) manga girls. “Kanojo Camera” (”kanojo” means girlfriend) is also sold to English market by $1.99. The English title of the app is “My Girls Camera” and looks like it will be an hit among eroge fans!!
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Via Modellismo HobbyMedia - During the TOKYO HOBBY SHOW I spotted MINI 4WD DS: a Nintendo DS online game developed by Rocket for Tamiya. It will be released in december. It features 80 different Mini4WD models that can be customized with over 400 option parts.
This is the first Mini4WD game released on a console since the classic Sega Saturn and Playstation 1 "Let's & go!" titles...
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The Tamagotchi are back with a new LCD color screen, a new download function (mini-games or rare items can be downloaded from a mobile phone via infrared port) and there are many costumes to make the charcaters even more kawaii! What more could you ask?!
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OK, I think Apple should wake up and start doing some MOE promotion like Microsoft!!! I love OSX but with a Moe cutie like this I fear I will buy Windows 7 next time I make my pilgrimage to Akiba...
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Thanko (the company famous for tons of usesell but uber geek USB gadgets) released a Soldering Iron powered USB. It can be powered by up to two USB ports or by a 9V battery. Not really powerfull but the perfect gadget for any hardware hacker out there!!
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This year I couldn't visit the TGS but Akiba Kakaku  posted a huge photo gallery with the most sexy companions!!! An old friend worked as a designer for Yakuza 4 so I really want to go and sit on the King of Shinjuku throne!!
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After the first kit released in July Bandai has announced new Pellermodels to create more 2D+1/2 plastic replicas of you and your friends! I'm pretty sure that within few weeks we will see some stop motion video "Made in Akiba" on NicoNico...

Official press release.
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Official page: http://www.wodejukebox.com/

Our pal Julie went to DeskTopLive.xna "live programming battle" event held last week in Tokyo SuperDeluxe club.  She even won a 360!! Ahh.... the beutifull life of akiba idols...



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(via John @ AN) Young Animal confirmed that the film adaptation of Shigemitsu Harada & Nobuto Hagio sex comedy manga series Yuria 100-shiki will be a live action feature premiering on November 20th. Hideo Jojo (Gachi-ban) is credited with screenplay, editing and directing. Yuria Type 100 will be played by AV idol Fujii Shelly. YES!!!

OK, I like the HPI RC Itashas but this Hatsune Miku Super GT from Tamiya is like a dream come true! This is not technically an itasha since it the reproduction of a real GT Car sponsored by Vocaloid / Crypton and probably this makes the car even more interesting and with a bigger potential customers base...

My dream came true and I can finally have my very own Ramen restaurant!!!
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Miki, a Japanese otaku in love with videogames, created this uber otaku diorama dedicated to our beloved game centers!

The programmer of the DS 10 recently released a port of a classic LSI videogame from the 80s: BQLSI STAR LASER! Seems the perfect appli do download with Julie's PIXEL LOVE!!
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Jefusion  via jappydolls - Ryo Kurashina's manga series "Jyouou Virgin ~Roppongi Night GP Part II~" (illustrated by Nao Kurebayashi) is getting a TV drama adaptation with the popular idol Mikie Hara (22) as main role.

Currently serialized in Shueisha's Business Jump, "Jyouou Virgin" revolves around young kyabakura hostesses competing for a big prize. It is the sequel to Kurashina's earlier "Jyouou," which was also turned into a drama series in 2005.  Like the previous series, the supporting cast features idols from the gravure and AV industries, including Natsuko Tatsumi, Reon Kadena, Saori Hara, and Yuma Asami.

This is a midnight drama so... there will be some nude scenes so don't forget to visit d-addicts.com at the beginning of october!
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Our friends at Japan Sugoi wrote an interesting post about Japanese Dekotora!
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Our friend Julie released PIXEL LOVE: her first Appli for iPhone! It costs less than 1 euro so I already downloaded a copy of it. If you got an iPhone I hope you will give it a try too!



Play with some sexy Japanese Game Girls and discover "Pixel Love":  the media-mix application created by Julie Watai. Julie is a young photographer and digital artist who recently published
the photo book "Samurai Girl". Julie (aka Amano Ai) is a sexy idol
herself and an avid gamer. She collaborated with several video-game
companies and last May was interviewed by the well-known magazine "Famitsu".

This application takes you into her World of Samurai Girls and 8bit Lolitas.
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http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=325914822&mt=8

Modelismo Hobby Media announced the 2009 edition of the Gundam model kit competition BAKUC. The winner will get a free trip to Hong Kong to partecipate to the finals that will be held at the end of the Year!! Who will be the best gunplanner of 2009?

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This week the Tokyo based magazine METROPOLIS published a short interview to me...

http://metropolis.co.jp/tokyo/803/qa.asp

Francesco Fondi
"Magazine publisher, writer and otaku"

What was it like being an otaku in Rome?
Italy was among the first to have an anime boom, with [UFO Robot] Grendizer in 1978. Maybe ten TV channels play anime, and even older people know popular series. When I was 18, I was a techno DJ and electronic musician. There was a huge otaku influence there. Everyone was into games—even before PlayStation—and event fliers were decorated with kanji, manga and giant robots. I was writing about this techno otaku culture for magazines. Then I started working as an IT consultant for banks. I came to Japan for the first time in 1996 for a rave, Rainbow 2000 at Mt Fuji. I also came for Akihabara. From a Western perspective, it was like seeing the future.

When did you encounter dating simulator games?
I went to Dusseldorf in Germany, which has a large Japanese population, and bought Dengeki Oh, a [now defunct] gaming magazine with four pages on eroge (erotic games). I was impressed that in Japan there were games meant for adults, and the gaming culture was so advanced. After visiting Japan, in 1998 I founded Play X, the first eroge magazine outside of Japan. It was 48 pages, plus a CD-ROM. This is the mook (magazine book) format popular in Japan, and I wanted to bring it to Europe. It was published by the company behind the Italian edition of PSM, and appeared right at the peak of the PlayStation boom.

Tell us about your move to Japan.
In 1998, I went to interview Sogna, the Japanese company that was making Viper games, a series of eroge famous because they featured scenes drawn by famous animators under pseudonyms… At the meeting, I was asked if I would like to work in marketing eroge in Europe and the United States. In truth I was making too much money in IT consulting, sometimes over $1,000 a day, and I had time to run my magazine. People said I would be crazy to leave that behind, but I felt that this otaku culture was going to grow. I quit my job in Italy and started working for Hobibox (a dating simulator distributor) in Japan. It was because I was making a lot of money that I was free to choose. If you cannot choose because you make a lot of money, then you are missing the point of it.

What do you do now?
I quit Hobibox six years ago and started my own publishing company, Hobby Media, which focuses on pop culture and Japanese subculture. Our mission is to showcase Japanese culture and let people know about things not promoted abroad, especially new trends. Examples would be doujinshi (fan-produced comics), do-it-yourself electronics (and other) underground things. There is a lot of content that is interesting, but it is not products being promoted by a big company.

What is your ultimate goal?
My goal is to make otaku culture understood as culture, not a subculture. A culture, not a market. The way we interpret otaku as consumers is strange. A trip to Wonder Festival shows there are more creative people making more creative objects than anywhere else in the world. This is an otaku renaissance—cultural production on an unprecedented scale. We would not argue that the great masters and their works are not part of culture, and so we should accept otaku as such.

What is your best memory of Japan?
My first trip to Comiket. I saw half a million people supporting one another in circles of creativity. It really reminded me of the early rave days when we used to say “Support those who support your underground.”

For more information, see www.hobbymedia.it. Patrick Galbraith

Synchronicity is the new song from the Japanese sexy idol Amano Ai. She wrote the lyrics of this Perfume's electro pop style track and she sings like Hatsune Miku Vocaloid!!

CARPET RACERS: A Crash Course - The first movie about RC cars and racers! This is going to be bigger than TRANSFORMERS 2!!!.

Pocket Lucho is the king of arcade modding: his mini arcade custom tabletops should be mass produced by Sega or Nintendo!! Via Danny Allen @ Giz

b1.robot.am spotted these super kawaii robots produced by Megahouse. Nice way to introduce your girlfriend to robotics... Seems that these micro-plastic-chiocolate bots are non made in Tirol but China anyway you can buy one on Strapia Wold at ca $6 each.
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First team R4i cracked it and now EZ Flash is going to release the first updated Boot ROM for EZVi users (for R4i instead the hack will be used only in a future release since the card is not upgradable)!

On Modellismo Hobby Media I posted these uber geek model kits produced by Estes. You can choose to build your own Flying Model Rocket of the Enterprise (Star Trek), of the Space Probe (from the cult sci-fi movie “The Black Hole” released by Disney in 1979) or, like the guys at  Verna rockets, you can build a rocket replica of the Viper from Battlestar Galactica. The sad thing is that these kits are out of production since almost 20 years  but you can still build one from scratch thanks to the JimZ rocket plans website.

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This is how DJ HERO would have looked like if produced by Nintendo during the Game & Watch days! I Imagine the name would have been something like: DJ HERO The house party or DJ HERO 4 beats! And yes, I would buy it even today!!!

Thanks to Tumblr

The Japanese designer+hardware hacking collective EXONEMO just started an ubergeek online service that let you input your own text and create your very own captcha T-shirt!

 Finally I can defend myself from real life spammers!!

A CAPTCHA or Captcha is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer. The process usually involves one computer (a server) asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade. Because other computers are unable to solve the CAPTCHA, any user entering a correct solution is presumed to be human.  The term (based upon the word capture) was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas J. Hopper (all of Carnegie Mellon University), and John Langford (then of IBM). It is a contrived acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart."  Currently, CAPTCHA creators recommend use of reCAPTCHA as the official implementation

The COSEPRON on sale on Rakutem is is the future of cosplay. With this new style of costume, in just few seconds, you can transform into a sexy minsuka police girl!! At it costs only $20 so way cheaper than COSPA costumes!! Now, just wait for the first AV (adult video) to feature this apron and the trend will make the traditional cosplay industry collapse!! "Cosplayapocalipse"!!! And, please don't forget that your read it first, before the NYT will publish an article about the hyper sexualized epron mania that is corrupting Japanese housewifes!!