There’s been a lot of buzz out on the interwebs and the blagoshpere lately about UNIQLO. For those not already in the know, UNIQLO is a purveyor of inexpensive, high quality, conservative fashion here in Japan. Recently they garnered attention in the US when it was announced that they would open a store in New York. Most notably though, they are also well known for their stylish t-shirts, whose designs are cycled throughout the year.
The store itself has a wonderful style, consisting mainly of plain white surfaces mixed in with brushed metal. It gives the impression of being inside Mac OS X. In addition to the touch-screen catalogues on tables, there are these cool wall street style LED tickers that appear to be giving real time information about sales trends of certain types of t-shirts. Along with that, are plasma displays showing these sales, and relationships to other shirts via a dynamic graphical hoo-ha of awesome. it all adds up to a pretty nifty, and seemingly real-time experience. (Or something out of an Orwell novel, but that’s up to the reader to figure out.)
The pictures you often see of the UNIQLO UT, are of the vending machine like walls of tubes, and as a concept, this strikes me as “Pretty Damn Cool”™. However, this effect of a multi story vending machine, is betrayed and, in my opinion, cheapened by what is not shown in the photos; the conventional clothing rack displaying the t-shirts themselves.
UNIQLO was so close to doing something new, interesting and different, and blew it in the execution. Everything about this store, from the racks of tubes, to the flat panel displays about the racks and in the tables, to even the walls themselves scream “I am modern, I am new, I am not a clothing store”. All that taken away by a rickety old rack in the middle of every aisle. I can just imagine the board room scene where this decision was made.
As a foreigner living in Japan, one of my unfortunate plights is that before I came, I was inoculated against the Yellow Fever. No, not the real disease that will destroy your liver and kidneys, I’m talking about the Yellow Fever that drives you mad with attraction to Asian women (or men) simply due to their exotic nature. Yes, for some reason, I have no natural attraction to Asian women, and never have. This gave me a bit of a hard time during my initial run up to coming to Japan, as every uncouth male around me was mentioning how lucky I was going to be, surrounded by all the Asian hotties… For me though, it’s water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.
However, on with the story. As you may already be aware, the groping of young women on trains has become quite a problem here in Japan, to the point where most railways now offer women only cars on their train lines. Most of the time, they are located at the head of the train, and usually only are in effect during the early morning commuting times of about 0600 - 0900 hrs.
Continue reading ‘New Findings Show Yellow Fever Inoculations Can Cause Lapses in Judgement’
Let me give you a little bit of a background here. Back when I as in University, there was a meeting held, where we decided what direction to take our lexicon in. After many hours of hot debate, a consensus was reached on two new suffixes that could be added to almost any verb, thereby transforming them into a noun. “-xor” would be added to anything to make it good, see “l33t haxor”, or “delicious meatxor” for examples. “-mo” would be added to the end of any word, to signify displeasure, and a certain air of mental retardation, see “lame-mo” or “tard-mo”.
Well, it seems that Japan has once again chosen something from the west to latch on to. Enter the Pasmo! Pasmo, from what I can gather with my limited Japanese, is two things. First, it is a wonderful RFID based rail pass system, that can easily be recharged at any train station. However, unlike its brilliantly marketed cousin Suica, Pasmo not only works at JR stations, but also on the Tokyo Metro, Busses, and most notably to me, the Noda Tobu line and Tsukuba Express! It also appears that Pasmo, and Suica can be friends, but more on this later.
Continue reading ‘I am a Pasmo, and Proud of It’
For those who aren’t already aware, Kanji is one of the three alphabets used here in Japan, along with hiragana ひらがな, and katakana カタカナ. Kanji are sometimes referred to as “Chinese Characters”, as they are borrowed straight out of written Chinese, though their pronunciation, and sometimes their meaning are very different.
So where do flowers = snow? Japan, that’s where.
Continue reading ‘Why I Hate Kanji’
