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John Thackwray set up a website where people post pictures of their bedrooms from all over the world. Fantastic, and definitely worth a look.

 

This week in Japan, a new pro basketball league is getting underway, and tonight’s game between Alvark Tokyo and the Ryukyu Golden Kings is being played on an LED court. It’s nuts.

There is a new Butler Café in Shibuya (website) – where men come to your table when you ring a bell and always answer with, “Yes my princess?”. While this idea isn’t completely new – there are maid cafes and hostess clubs for men, and host clubs for women. But the twist with this butler cafe in the Shibuya district of Tokyo, Japan? All the men are Western.

Fascinatingly, the female owner (Yuki Hirohata) of the club walked through Shibuya and asked over 200 women what they were looking for in a cafe. She said these women all wanted waiters that were male, good looking, treat them nice, but most importantly, were Westerners.

“Being gentlemanly in Japanese culture is embarrassing for Japanese men. Women are exhausted with the traditional rules of Japanese society. These guys are different than typical Japanese men – they make me feel special.”

Update: this appears to have permanently closed late 2018. Archive of the old website.

Butler Cafe: aicom shibuya blg 5F, 11-6 Udagawa-cho Bldg, Udagawacho, Shibuya-ku Tokyo

This summed up my experience with Japanese arcades very well. He even includes the ‘Fear of Heights’ experience by Bandai-Namco that I’ve posted about before. But I can’t believe I missed the real cars in Odaiba. Guess I’ll need to make another trip.

Studio Ghibli unveiled several new exhibits at their studio park this last few months. One of the additions is the Totoro Catbus.

Time for another trip to Japan!

It’s been shown in several studies that constantly taking photos of events dramatically reduces your ability to actually remember them (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/…/Want-remember-event-DONT-photo…)

So Rijksmuseum tells you to put down the cel phone. They give you a pad of paper and pencil when you enter the museum and encourage you to draw what you see – to help you experience the awe and wonder of art. They even blog/post people’s drawings.

I, for one, approve.

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/startdrawing/draft%20book

What do you do if you’re classically trained on the centuries old shamisen – but want to rock like the young people you are?

The Tsugargu Shamisen Girls show you.

What happens when you mix water slides and led lights? Awesomeness. This is what:

The Saitama, Japan fireworks display set a record with the launch of the world’s largest single firework. A 4-foot diameter, 1,014 pound beast which explodes in all of its glory at about the 3:20 mark.

Extremely high quality wax/plastic foods are big in Japan and found all over in display windows.
Here one of the food artists demonstrates how to make tempura and other foods using layers of colored wax and other materials. The first part with shrimp tempura is fun, but the head of lettuce is astounding.