IKEA Japan Storage Problems campaign: Dance to the beat!

In 2009, IKEA Japan ran a marketing campaign called Shunoumondai (Storage Problems). “Storage Solution Experts” from IKEA would go to the homes of people with major storage problems, install a bunch of IKEA stuff, and solve it. The theme of the campaign was this catchy song with calypso beat, and the accompanying dance. (Katazuke means ‘to put [stuff] away’).

Catchy, isn’t it? I have to restrain myself from breaking out in song and dance at our local IKEA in Avignon.

IKEA held in-house auditions for the campaign, where their employees had to demonstrate their…dance abilities? Well here are some of the auditions.

Some of the employees are suspiciously good. This guy here must be an ex-ballet dancer or something…

And finally, here are a couple of the Storage Problem Solving visits. They do the dance as warm-up and cool-down exercises, reminiscent of Rajio Taiso (radio exercises and the morning assembly exercised performed at some Japanese companies.

It’s even funnier when a platinum blond Swede does it!

You can see the rest of the series here.

I just love this Apple Japan New Years 2012 image.

It’s not even perpetual.

This is a solid gold 2012 calendar made to commemorate Walt Disney’s 110th birthday. It was unveiled by a jewelry maker in Ginza, Tokyo called Ginza Tanaka.

The calendar measures 41.66 cm x 66.6 cm (about 16.3” x 26.2”) and comes in a frame. The total weight of the gold is 6 kg (about 13.2 lbs). The description doesn’t specify, but since 18K is the standard for gold jewelry in Japan (14K is not really considered to be solid gold) I’m assuming the calendar is at least 18K.

The calendar costs 60 million yen, or about US $768,250.

Also available: a small 5 gram gold calendar for 45,000 yen, a 1 gram version for 11,000 yen, and a larger gold leaf calendar for 35,000 yen. (Japanese page)

Now, I have been pondering who the heck is the intended customer for this line of gold calendars. It is sort of hard to imagine a lot of Japanese customers buying these, even if Disney fandom runs deep in Japan, since they are so ostentatious. Especially not this year, the year of repeated natural disasters (besides the earthquake and tsunami, there has been record breaking flooding too) and continuing economic woes. Besides, rich Japanese people these days do not like to flaunt their wealth anymore, unlike in the show-off 1980s.

I suspect that the primary target for these calendars are wealthy Chinese customers. Ginza is apparently a mecca for Chinese tourists with money to burn - so much so that the venerable department store Mitsukoshi remade their store to appeal more to them (a move which drew a lot of criticism and ire from their Japanese customer base).

Maybe that’s the role Japan is going to play in the near future: a shiny little playground and shopping mall for rich dilettantes from other Asian countries.

90th Anniversary 90-color Sakura Coupy colored pencil set, in a limited edition of 5,000 sets. It costs 9,000 yen, and so far I’ve only seen it for sale in Japan.

As an adult I prefer Caran d’Ache, Faber-Castell and Mitsubishi Holbein pencils, but I’ll always have a soft spot for Sakura Coupys.

Does Siri really mean butt in Japanese?

There has been a thing going about since the Apple announcement of the IPhone 4S, iOS 5 and its new voice-activated assistant thingie Siri, that the word ‘siri’ means ‘butt’ in Japanese. It’s been mentioned on several “mainstream” sites such as CNET and MSNBC, and many English speakers have been retweeting this ‘fact’.

Well is it true? Not really.

One word for your seat in Japan is “shiri” (しり in hiragana, 尻 in kanji), which, if you are unfamiliar with Japanese, may look just like Siri. However, while Siri is pronounced ‘SI-ri’ with the accent on the first syllable, shiri is pronounced ‘shi-RI’, with the accent on the second syllable. This may not seem like much of a difference to you, but in Japanese there are dozens of words like that. Besides, Siri has a “s” while shiri has an “sh” sound, which are not the same thing either.

What does complicate matters a bit is that in Japanese, there is no clear “S” sound per se when paired with the ‘i’ sound. So, when Siri is transposed into Japanese phonetically, it does because “shiri”. However, it would still be pronounced “SHI-ri” (accent on first syllable), and most people whose sense of humor is not stuck in the 3rd grade would know the difference.

I follow the Japanese Twitter universe about as equally as I follow the English one. There have indeed been a few scattered sniggering mentions of Siri being shiri. Ironically though, quite a few of then were picking up on the mention of this in the English media and commenting on that (the circle jerk of social media?). However, the vast majority of people tweeting about the iPhone4S announcement were peeved that Siri is not yet available for Japanese. The iPhone is tremendously popular in Japan, and people are gagging to try this new cool voice activated assistant.

Some are even saying stuff like it’s a ‘major embarassment’ for Apple, and that they should even change the name before launching Siri in Japan. What bullshit. I’m sure some juveniles in Japan will snigger about it, but most will not care one bit. Apple Japan has a huge number of native Japanese employees. Do you think that one of them would not have spoken up if they had thought that the name Siri would be offensive in Japan? I mean, come on now. It’s just like when Apple did not see any problem with the name iPad, but some Beavis and Butthead types did. That faded pretty fast too.

Besides, Japanese people love butts. Unlike in English, where butt-related words and phrases such as “asshole” “asswipe” “rip you a new one” - oh, and “butthead” have negative, derogatory meanings, in Japanese the ass is mostly regarded as this cute, somewhat humorous thing, whether they belong to little kids or sumo wrestlers. Chris (an American who has been living in Japan since 1997) tweeted that Apple should even think about using a cute butt icon for Siri. It’s not such a bad idea, really. ^_^

I would tell MSNBC et. al. to get a clue, but I’ve basically given up on the English speaking ‘mainstream’ media to have any clue at all about Japan or Japanese culture. (You can peruse my more serious personal site for more about that if you’re interested.)

By the way, most Japanese people would call the butt “oshiri”, not “shiri”. Here are some words for the buttocks area in order of rudeness, starting with ones that are safe to use in front of a nice Japanese grandma.

• oshiri おしり
• hippu ヒップ　(derived from the English ‘hip’)
• bakku バック　(derived from the English ‘back’. Somewhat obscure, usually used in conjunction with other words Even more obscure and oblique would be the Japanese word for back, ushiro. )
• shiri 　しり　(yep, omitting the honorific ‘o’ makes it that much ruder)
• ketsu けつ　

Schrödinger’s Nyan Cat. (via many places) Makes me both giggle and sort of want to apologize for silly Japanese culture contaminating the world =^.^=

The Cool Japan logo (or is it Japan Next)

Cool Japan* is a Japanese government project to spread the cultural and intellectual influence of er, cool stuff from Japan internationally. It is spearheaded by METI, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. While it was initiated in 2010, it is being pushed more energetically in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake. (Incidentally, you may know METI better by their daily/weekly radiation reports since the Fukushima nuclear power plant disasters.) By “Cool Japan”, they mean “creative industries” such as anime, fashion and film (at least that’s what they list so far).

The official information on the METI site is only in Japanese, which seems to sort of belie the ‘international’ aspect, but there you are. Perhaps they want to keep it in Japan for now until they can map out a strategy.

In the meantime though, they have an official logo.

It looks like a flaming red ball…the red sun on the Japanese flag on fire. Or something like that. To me, it looks abit like the red ball/sun is running away fast from something, which is probably not the intention. And then there’s the somewhat enigmatic “Japan Next” text underneath. Why the program is called Cool Japan, while the logo says Japan Next, is beyond me, but there it is.

It was designed by “famous logo designer Kashiwa Sato”. The official METI announcement of the Cool Japan/Japan Next logo somewhat oddly includes examples of some of his other work.

It’s almost like they are trying to say “hey look, the logo may be a bit enigmatic but it was done by This Famous/Legit Designer!” But I may be over-analyzing.

What do you think of that Cool Japan Next logo? Good, bad, meh?

[* Cool Japan is also the name of a long running English language show on NHK, where expats residing in Japan talk about or explore ‘cool things about Japan’. I personally can’t stand the show, but that’s for another time.]

Karelog, the boyfriend tracking app

A new Android app has been causing quite a bit of controversy in the Japanese media recently. The app is Karelog (カレログ); “kare” literally means “he” or “him” but in this context it means “boyfriend” - so Karelog is the Boyfriend Log app.

The cute and frilly (complete with shiny kittens) Karelog home page proclaims that installing the app on “his” cellphone enables the girlfriend remotely (via the app’s web service) check his phone’s battery status, track his positioning via GPS, and see what kind other apps are installed on there. Yep, it’s an app that helps a suspicious girlfriend (or spouse, or whomever) track the hapless “he” via his phone.

That’s already a big yipes right there. But what made it worse was that the company initially openly touted its use as a surveillance tool. What’s more, apparently the app can be ‘hidden’ so that the phone owner doesn’t know that’s it’s been installed. Double yipes.

After quite a storm of media controversy, the Karelog website now says quite prominently that “even if you are very close [to the phone owner] you stil need their express permission to remotely track their data, otherwise you will be violating their right to privacy and may be arrested”, etc etc. The “great as a surveillance tool!” type stuff has been removed. The marketing text now proclaims it’s a “relationship-aid app” “so you can always feel at ease when you’re apart” “for the couple that wants to stay close, all the time!” Still, it’s quite obvious to anyone what this app is capable of - and who in their right mind would let anyone else install it on their phone? Totally spineless husbands and boyfriends who are that desparate to hang onto the girl?

The app is still available on the Android market (which is apparently not closely monitored in the way the iPhone App store is. Note, I don’t have an Android phone, so I’m just repeating what the media is saying.)

Well, what do you think of this app? Would you use it - especially if you think you could get away with your boyfriend (or girlfriend) not knowing it was there? I certainly wouldn’t…and if my spouse or boyfriend did that to me, that would be the end, no questions asked. In a way though I’m not surprised that it exists - and, if Karelog is forced to stop marketing themselves openly, it may still sell well in some underground fashion.

• Karelog website (J)

Broccoli terrorism!

In light of recent events, not to mention over-hyped dolorous commemorations of past events et. al., I just loved this story about ‘terrorism’ in Japan (in Japanese). To whit:

A bunch of pranksters at Tokyo University (the most prestigious university in Japan) organized a ‘terrorist’ attack via Twitter, targeting the numerous unsecured bicycles that dot the campus. They took off the seats from several bicycles, and replaced then with a broccoli, or in a few cases bananas. Theft does not seem to be the motive, since the seats were left with the bicycles (in the basket and so on).

The tweets organizing this said things like “the only cost of participation is a stalk of broccoli”, and “the act will be done in the middle of the night”. They also included instructions for whittling down the broccoli stalks so that they’d fit into the hole left by the removed seats. In addition, the admonished would-be participants that “we aren ‘t going to steal the seats”.

Motives for the ‘terrorism’ are not clear, but it may have been influenced by a manga called Nichijo (Every Day) which features similar pranks.

One victim, a Tokyo University student, proclaimed that “Real Tokyo University students do not bow to terrorists!” and posted photos of himself stir frying the culprit broccoli and eating it with mayonnaise.

ETA: I’ve found a photo of some of the vandalized bikes, thanks to the good folks at 2ch.