German online retail site brands4friends yesterday launched its service in Japan, in which it sells remainders of high quality brand name goods through temporary auctions.Auctions are familiar to Japa...

There are many kinds of otaku (geek) in Japan and many kinds of moe (萌え, -philes). However, this is one of the most unexpected we’ve come across so far.The last couple of years has seen a boom i...

Well, it’s almost cherry blossom season. In about two weeks’ time the first sakura buds will start to bloom in the south of Japan. As the season makes its way north we can witness the requisite st...

The Kobe Shimbun recently reported on a “boom” happening among drinkers in their twenties and thirties: online nomikai.As we know, Japanese nomikai often have a lot of ritual and social tension, e...

Everyone seems to rave about Twitter but they are not the only kids on the block anymore.Back in December, Ameba, a Japanese blog service with seven million users, launched a free new micro-blogging s...

International writer, photographer and filmmaker Roland Hagenberg has accumulated his long years of experience covering major Japanese architects for magazines like Vogue and Architectural Digest into...

I think that this will be roundly ridiculed throughout the Japan-centric blogostweetsphere, so let’s leave it up to them to dissect how this terrible video panders to the lowest common pop denominat...

Softbank invested $20 million (about 18 billion JPY) in Ustream at the end of January, giving them a 13.7% share in the American streaming service. They don’t want to stop there, either, but hope to...

Tokyo can feel like a small world at times. Last weekend we were watching Toast Girl at the old Nanzuka Underground Gallery in Shibuya. Then this weekend we went to the current Nanzuka space in Shirok...

TOTO, a major Japanese toilet-maker, is promoting its newest product, the water-efficient Greenmax 4.8, through a robot action figure. The mobile strap toy barks eco-friendly slogans like “Protect t...

Yuri Suzuki and Åbäke have gotten together to put on SUZUKI ÅFFICE, a “secret” bar hiding on the other side of a tiny cabinet. Having gone through the looking glass, you find yourself in a a ti...

After hitting up Suzuki Affice, we wandered on over to check out Toast Girl’s live performance. Not quite sure how to describe it, but if Kahimi Karie worked in a bakery, had baguettes for hands, wo...

It takes a country as obsessed with food and as innovative in retail as Japan to make even cheap ready-to-eat noodles seem both the everyman’s meal as well as a famous brand.Seven Eleven convenience...

Here’s a little Valentine’s Day treat for all you lonely boys out there! I Want Chu (sic — “chu” is presumably “you” in katakana speak) is an interactive Flash site starring a feast of s...

Here’s some lovin’ for your digital life. Perfect for Valentine’s Day, these heart-shaped 20mm diameter mini speakers work with your iPod. Made by Hitachi maxell, the Cococoron (”kokoro” mea...

It seems that Set Japan, who wowed us with their Louis Vuitton / Murakami and Marc Jacobs promotions last year, have now been working on “built” QR codes for clients like Frisk mints, utilizing ac...

We loved the concept behind the Touch Wood last year, NTT DOCOMO’s cypress phone. Now, once again mixing eco and design insights in that bravado way that only Japanese product designers seem to know...

We’ve been gathering resources and case studies on eco trends in Japan for years now. As part of our recent eco report we compiled a lot of them into categories in order to analyze their influence a...

We all would like to have a girl for every day of the week. While most of us struggle unsuccessfully to convert our fantasies into reality, Suntory has achieved this feat with their latest TV commerci...

Consumers love to buy cool shoes made from durable material, and Seal brand have taken this to an eco level. Collaborating with Hiroshima sneakers line Spingle Move, their latest product, Sneaker 101,...