Saturday Morning Video - "Kid's Police"

I don't need subtitles to know WHAT THE FUCK?

Attack Of The Bagelheads

So, the newest stupid thing on Planet Japan is making yourself look like you have a disfigured, tumor sodden face. Sorry if you thought the header was a Zionist reference or something...

In Tokyo, "freaks for the night" drip saline into their foreheads for two hours while they depress the center. Their bodies absorb it over time so by the next morning it goes back to normal. Extreme body modification photographer Ryoichi “Keroppy” Maeda said that "everyone I know who has done it, no matter how many times, their skin has gone back to exactly how it was before."

Wow, I guess it's finally come to this for the "trying too hard" crowd...

Tsunami Translated Means "Wave Of Cars And Buses"

The Japanese are not just good for tentacle rape hentai - they've got batshit ideas about science!

They will try to revive the long extinct species by obtaining tissue over summer from the carcass of a mammoth preserved in a Russian research laboratory. The nuclei of mammoth cells will be inserted into an elephant's egg cell where the nuclei have been removed, creating an embryo containing mammoth genes. The embryo will later be inserted into an elephant's uterus with the hope that the animal will eventually give birth to a baby mammoth, just the way God intended it to be.

At the heart of the project is a new technique to extract DNA from frozen cells. Previously, this was an obstacle to cloning attempts because of the damage cells sustained in the freezing process, but in 2008, Japanese scientists cloned a mouse from the cells of another that had been kept in temperatures similar to frozen ground for 16 years. The extracted cell nucleus from the dead mouse (not to be confused with deadmau5) was implanted into the egg of a live mouse.

Some mammoth remains still retain usable tissue samples, making the species a better candidate for cloning, unlike dinosaurs, which disappeared 65 million years ago and whose remains exist only as fossils. Why a majority of the huge creatures that once strode in large herds across Eurasia and North America died out towards the end of the last Ice Age is still debated. Some hold that mammoths were hunted to extinction by humans, while others argue that climate change was more to blame. If the Japanese are successful, they may not only help to answer those questions, but also find horrible ways to exploit the revived species. Sailor Moon branded mammoth sandwich vending machines, anyone?

Vegicide

I eat meat, because I'm not cruel. (here's the full anime, parts 1 and 2)

Jackie Chan

Count Machine Onahole is a basically a Fleshlight with a counting mechanism attached. Like a pedometer for masturbating. A pudometer? A jerkulator?

Okay, who doesn't like to spice up their sex life, but is that going to come in the way of monitoring how many thrusts it takes to get to the center of the Tootsie Pop? Is checking how many pumps per minute you average going to be the video game high score of the Xbox generation? Isn't it enough that you're fucking a fake pussy stashed in a hollowed out flashlight?

The manufacturers are proud to point out that Japanese porn star Hiroshi "Chocoball" Mukai has set some sort of record with 426 pumps in one minute. Admittedly, I know the name of an adult actor or two, and I've never heard of this cat - you tend to remember "Chocoball" no matter what the context. It's no coincidence that I was just talking about how totally mental Japan is with one of my Japanese clients today (he told me about mothers who ride by you on a bike and slash you with a razor while I countered with hentai tentacle rape). This is yet another piece of proof.

Gizmodo summed it up best: "Want one? No you don't. But it's $124 if for some reason you change your mind."

Putting The Japan In Planet Japan

Japanese painter Tetsuya Ishida (1973-2005) has been linked all over the web today for some reason. And I'm a trend vetter, not necessarily a setter.

More? Okay...

More Gothic Or Lolita?

Just a few trailers about a young lady and her deadly umbrella.

I'll Just Stick With Sushi, Thanks

Santa Kraws

Bass Clef Japan

how did you make it this far?

Tachikoma!

All you anime nerds now have a real good reason to move to Planet Japan. The Japanese have created a life sized Tachikoma robot one in which you can actually travel. They call it the 'personal edition', the cocoon shaped vehicle (for non Ghost In The Shell fans) has a camera on the outside which projects the view on the spherical cockpit inside (image after the jump). As seen in the video it can be controlled by a joystick. For now it can accommodate a medium sized passenger weighing no more than 130 lbs.

Hmmm, that was underwhelming.

Losers Unite!

Today kicks off the annual gathering of the great horde of the unwashed, aka the San Diego Comic-Con!

Besides legions of nasty geeks, costumed lunatics, ware hockers, fanboy nerds, and Hollywood types shilling previews, you're bound to find a couple of folks who even stand out as creepier. This is about aguy from Japan, but as manga comics are also going to be prominent, count on a few of these type there...

Nisan didn't mean to fall in love with Nemutan. Their first encounter - at a comic-book convention that Nisan's gaming friends dragged him to in Tokyo - was serendipitous. Nisan was wandering aimlessly around the crowded exhibition hall when he suddenly found himself staring into Nemutan's bright blue eyes. In the beginning, they were just friends. Then, when Nisan got his driver's license a few months later, he invited Nemutan for a ride around town in his beat-up Toyota. They went to a beach, not far from the home he shares with his parents in a suburb of Tokyo. It was the first of many road trips they would take together. As they got to know each other, they traveled hundreds of miles west -- to Kyoto, Osaka and Nara, sleeping in his car or crashing on friends' couches to save money. They took touristy pictures under cherry trees, frolicked like children on merry-go-rounds and slurped noodles on street corners. Now, after three years together, they are virtually inseparable. "I've experienced so many amazing things because of her," Nisan told me, rubbing Nemutan's leg warmly. "She has really changed my life."

Nemutan doesn't really have a leg. She's a stuffed pillowcase - a 2-D depiction of a character, Nemu, from an X-rated version of a PC video game called Da Capo, printed on synthetic fabric. In the game, which is less a game than an interactive visual novel about a schoolyard romance, Nemu is the loudmouthed little sister of the main character, whom she calls nisan, or "big brother," a nickname Nisan adopted as his own when he met Nemu. When I joined the couple for lunch at their favorite all-you-can-eat salad bar in the Tokyo suburb of Hachioji, he insisted on being called only by this new nickname, addressing his body-pillow girlfriend using the suffix "tan" to show how much he adored her. Nemutan is 10, maybe 12 years old and wears a little blue bikini and gold ribbons in her hair. Nisan knows she's not real, but that hasn't stopped him from loving her just the same. "Of course she's my girlfriend," he said, widening his eyes as if shocked by the question. "I have real feelings for her."

So in summary, there are full grown men who have pedophilic relationships with pillowcases. That is fucked.

What happened to the good old days of Comic-Con, where you could go with your best pal and spend the day trying to sell your comic book idea, and then walk to Tiajuana so you could pick up cheap pharmacuticals?

Having Lame Jack Off Material Is Now Felonious

In an obscenity first, a U.S. comic book collector has pleaded guilty to importing and possessing Japanese manga books depicting illustrations of child sex abuse and bestiality. We all know it was shitty and juvenile, but obscene?

Christopher Handley, who was described by his lawyer as a “prolific collector” of manga, plead guilty last week to mailing obscene matter, and to “possession of obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children.” Three other counts were dropped in a plea deal with prosecutors.

The 39-year-old office worker was charged under the 2003 Protect Act, which outlaws cartoons, drawings, sculptures or paintings depicting minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct, and which lack “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” Handley’s guilty plea makes him the first to be convicted under that law for possessing cartoon art, without any evidence that he also collected or viewed genuine child pornography. He faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

Comics fans are alarmed by the case, saying that jailing someone over manga does nothing to protect children from sexual abuse. “This art that this man possessed as part of a larger collection of manga … is now the basis for [a sentence] designed to protect children from abuse,” says Charles Brownstein, executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. “The drawings are not obscene and are not tantamount to pornography. They are lines on paper.”

Congress passed the Protect Act after the Supreme Court struck down a broader law prohibiting any visual depictions of minors engaged in sexual activity, including computer-generated imagery and other fakes. The high court ruled that the ban was overbroad, and could cover legitimate speech, including Hollywood productions. In response, the Protect Act narrows the prohibition to cover only depictions that the defendant’s community would consider “obscene.”

“It’s probably the only law I’m aware of, if a client shows me a book or magazine or movie, and asks me if this image is illegal, I can’t tell them,” says Eric Chase, Handley’s attorney. Chase says he recommended the plea agreement to his client because he didn’t think he could convince a jury to acquit him once they’d seen the images in question. The lawyer declined to describe the details. “If they can imagine it, they drew it,” he says. “Use your imagination. It was there.”

The case began in 2006, when customs officials intercepted and opened a package from Japan addressed to Handley. Seven books of manga inside contained cartoon drawings of minors engaged in sexually explicit acts. One book included depictions of bestiality, according to stipulations in Handley’s plea deal. Frenchy Lunning, a manga expert at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, was a consultant in the case. She says the books were from the widely available Lolicon variety — a Japanese word play on “Lolita.”

“This stuff is huge in Japan, in all of Asia,” Lunning says. Handley, she adds, “is not a pedophile. He had no photographs of child pornography.” Handley remains free pending a yet-to-be scheduled sentencing date. Mike Bladel, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa, declined to state what kind of sentence the government would seek, but claimed there were hundreds of obscene panels in the seized manga. Chase says he’s hoping the judge will take into account the circumstances. “He was a prolific collector,” says the lawyer. “He did not focus on this type of manga. He collected everything that was out there that he could get his hands on. I think this makes a huge difference.”

This is a real shame because all that tentacle rape and ridiculous ultra-graphic sexuality in manga is neither child porn or titillating in any manner, but is now getting lumped in with those "illicit" materials. In reality, it's just a pathetic, adolescent exaggerated sexuality for losers who can relate better to a silly, cartoonish version of womanhood and sexuality than face real life versions. I want to see those people punished, but not with jail or anything like that. Let's just go back to scorning their sad lifestyles and berate them as a society for sexualizing the unsexy.

Mr. Muscle March

If it's not abundantly clear, after a pro football player steals the all-important protein powder, it's up to all the ripped dudes to strike the pose of the wall-smasher in front of them to keep the "muscle march" moving and bring the thief to justice. Hot, sweaty locker room justice.

Of Wolf...And Pig

Honda Surrogates

Honda has developed new brain-machine interface (BMI) technology that allows humans to control the Asimo humanoid robot simply by thinking certain thoughts. Now a robot can give you the finger!

The BMI system, which Honda developed along with Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) and Shimadzu Corporation, consists of a sensor-laden helmet that measures the user’s brain activity and a computer that analyzes the thought patterns and relays them as wireless commands to the robot. (see it here.)

When the user simply thinks about moving his or her right hand, the pre-programmed Asimo responds several seconds later by raising its right arm. Likewise, Asimo lifts its left arm when the person thinks about moving their left hand, it begins to walk when the person thinks about moving their legs, and it holds its hand up in front of its mouth when the person thinks about moving their tongue.

The high-precision BMI technology relies on three different types of brain activity measurements. EEG (electroencephalography) sensors measure the slight fluctuations in electrical potential on the scalp that occur when thinking, while NIRS (near-infrared spectroscopy) sensors measure changes in cerebral blood flow. Newly developed information extraction technology is used to process the complex data from these two types of sensors, resulting in a more accurate reading. The system reportedly has an accuracy rate of more than 90%.

The use of EEG and NIRS sensors makes the new system more compact than previous BMI systems that rely on bulkier fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) technology. Although the system is small enough to be transported from place to place, the developers plan to further reduce the size.

Honda, which has been conducting BMI research and development with ATR since 2005, is looking into the possibility of one day using this type of interface technology with artificial intelligence and robotics to create devices that users can operate without having to move.

If any of this sounds familiar it could be due to the upcoming film The Surrogates. The Bruce Willis film is set for September, and (like most current good ideas in film) was based on a comic book. Set in 2054, people use remote-controlled artificial bodies ("surrogates") to interact with each other....but someone is determined to return people to their old lives instead of living through proxies. When several surrogates are murdered, a cop follows the crimes through his own surrogate, but the investigation forces the cop to bring his human form out of isolation and unravel a conspiracy behind the crimes.

The book's creator was inspired after reading about numerous individuals who lost their spouses or their jobs due their addiction to the internet and their online personas: "It dawned on me that if you were somehow able to create a persona and send it out into the real world—where it could go to work for you, and run your errands, and so on—then you would never have to go back to being yourself."

Suck It, Germany

Battle for the odd throne continues...

Guess What This Movie Is Called

I'm trying to pretend that it's an empowering film for young girls, but I'm pretty sure it's just an excuse for 90 minutes of panty shots. Which is empowering for perverts, I suppose.

Japanese Christmas

Ho ho hoOH MY GOD IT'S A GIANT XMAS KID!