The Financial Times has taken an interest in Japanese robotics and produced an interesting video highlighting recent developments. In particular, it examines the line that divides the socially practical from the so-called uncanny Valley.

These days it can seem at times that Japanese robotics seem to produce either one of two types of machine: cute ones that are meant to be personal companions, or scary ones that are bold yet doomed attempts to replace humans with androids.

On the cute side we recently saw Hitachi’s latest EMIEW robot and TABO, the world’s first iPad screen robot. Many of these are small in size. Perhaps most notably has been Pepper, co-developed by Softbank and who seems to be everywhere these days. The FT, though, concludes that Pepper “is more like a demanding child, burbling incessantly, demanding our attention and firing out questions to which it does not necessarily want an answer.”

On the other side of the coin are uneasily human-like robots like those developed by Hiroshi Ishiguro or the android guide, Aiko Chihira, hired by Mitsukoshi department store.

Regardless of disquiet from some, an android based on Matsuko Deluxe co-hosted a TV show for several months while one of Ishiguro’s androids has been performing in theater plays with live actors.

But is this all just a gimmick?

Technological advances mean that robots are increasing looking and behaving like humans. But can these machines ever match their human counterparts? FT’s Richard Waters and Kana Inagaki discover the latest humanoid robots and ask whether these machines can truly enhance society.

Of course, these questions are also staples of science fiction, as illustrated by recent movies like Ex Machina, Chappie and Automata. And the debate is unlikely to die down any time soon.

Japanese fashion brand Trove has created a series of what it calls Wa-Robe items (“wa” meaning Japanese).

The most exciting of these are three Star Wars Hanten, coming in designs featuring Master Yoda or the poster for the original 1977 Star Wars, now known as Episode IV: A New Hope.

A hanten is a type of short and light Japanese overcoat.

Here the Star Wars design is on the inside, while the film series’ iconic logo is on the back of the collar.

It seems particularly apt that a traditional item of Japanese clothing has married with Star Wars in this way, given how George Lucas raided from Japanese history and cinema for the sources of inspiration for his fictional galaxy.

The Yoda hanten is very nicely done, merging an image of the vertically challenged Jedi Master with a background and motifs that seem to have come from a folding screen painting.

This is another great example of the kind of sophisticated way Star Wars merchandise is localized in Japan. Other examples include awesome die-cast figures, an interactive Bluetooth-enabled snow globe, and the best-selling Space Opera Dancing Music Figures.

Barack Obama will visit Hiroshima in May, it was officially confirmed by the White House.

This will make Obama the first sitting president to visit the city where the first nuclear weapon was used. Since then Hiroshima, along with Nagasaki, has led efforts for nuclear disarmament and has long asked the president to visit the city to see the destruction for himself in the Peace Memorial Park.

However, Obama will not go to Hiroshima on May 27th to make an apology for the Allies’ use of the atom bomb per se.

“The President will make an historic visit to Hiroshima with Prime Minister [Shinzo] Abe to highlight his continued commitment to pursuing peace and security in a world without nuclear weapons,” said a statement.

Hiroshima has previously been visited on an official capacity by Secretary of State John Kerry and Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, as well as by former president Jimmy Carter after he had retired.

President Obama will also be in Japan to attend the G7 summit in Japan’s Ise-Shima peninsula. He will visit Hiroshima after the conclusion of the summit and also travel to Vietnam in May.

Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 in part for his commitment to nuclear disarmament. “The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons,” the official Prize announcement said.

“As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act,” he told an audience in Prague on April 2009. “So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

However, the warhead stockpile has little changed during his presidency and in fact the Obama’s administration has actually launched a costly upgrade of the country’s entire nuclear triad.

That being said, he has striven to defuse nuclear tension with other nations, especially Iran, and we can only speculate on the progress in disarming that could have been made if the situation with Russia had not worsened so much or if there hadn’t been such staunch Republican opposition.

Dogged by problems since preparations began, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics now face another potential scandal. The Guardian has revealed a mysterious payment made to a Singaporean bank account linked to a former IOC member’s son.

The payment of around €1.3m (about $1.5m) was made by the Tokyo Olympic bid team to an account linked to Papa Massata Diack, who is the son of disgraced athletics chief Lamine Diack and is himself under investigation for possible financial misdeeds in 2009 over the Doha bid for the 2016 Olympics. Diack Sr resigned as president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) after allegations he had accepted massive bribes to cover up positive Russian doping tests.

What the payment was for is currently the subject of intense speculation and police attention in France.

As The Guardian notes, “any suggestion that votes could have been were bought will be hugely embarrassing for the IOC, which has set great store by the probity of its bidding process since reforms following the bribery scandal which erupted preceding the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games.”

Papa Massata Diack, described as “a sort of Keyser Söze of the often murky world of sports marketing,” worked with Japanese ad agency giant Dentsu to seek sponsorship deals in developing markets. He is alleged to have requested $5m from Qatar at a time when it was bidding for the 2017 world athletics championships and the 2020 Olympics.

Dentsu is also apparently implicated, since its sponsorship contract with the IAAF runs until 2029, having been unilaterally extended by Diack Sr in the final months of his presidency.

The Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee has claimed it had nothing to do with the bid and cannot comment on the payment. “The Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee has no means of knowing these allegations,” a spokesperson told The Guardian. “We believe that the Games were awarded to Tokyo because the city presented the best bid.”

Well, the Japanese Olympic Committee, which handled the bid, should know, right? No, they claimed their entire PR team is away on a business trip and cannot respond to the allegations. Dentsu was also involved with the bid (and with the preparations for the Olympics), but it told The Guardian that it knows nothing about the payment to the Singaporean bank account known as Black Tidings.

As we saw with the fiasco of the National Stadium’s inflated construction costs that ultimately led to the late Zaha Hadid’s design being scrapped in favor of a cheaper one by a Japanese architecture, the various committees and bureaucrats in the national and Tokyo governments are quite adept at deflecting responsibility.

Given Dentsu’s power over the media in Japan, it will also be interesting to observe the extent to which this development gets reported locally.

Japan has a troubled relationship with feminism to put it mildly.

Remember Bijin Uketsuke, the “beautiful receptionist” app? Or the jeers Ayaka Shiomura had to endure in the Tokyo Assembly from her older male colleagues? Or Kanagawa’s attempt to promote female empowerment in the corporate sector with a gallery of guys?

Here’s another example to add to that dubious litany.

H.I.S. Travel, one of Japan’s major travel agencies, has been forced to cancel a promotional campaign where it offered travelers the chance to be accompanied by “beautiful girls” from the University of Tokyo.

A mere 12 hours after it launched on Wednesday, a barrage of complaints and negative buzz on Twitter led to the company pulling the promo stunt.

Five college students, who have all appeared in an equally contentious biannual book that showcases attractive female scholars in an attempt to show that University of Tokyo students are not all bookworms, were to be available to customers chosen by lottery. Customers would then get the chance to sit next to the young lady of their choosing for the duration of their flight to their destination. She would then entertain you with intelligent conversation, seemingly proving true the recent controversial comments by politician Tsuneo Akaeda that women who continue their education end up as hostesses.

We are also surprised that the University of Tokyo didn’t try to stop H.I.S., since the campaign potentially cheapens the reputation of the most prestigious college in Japan. Imagine the reaction if an American travel agency ran a “Harvard Hotties” campaign?

The return to Japanese TV screens last week of the 32-year-old unmarried TV “talent” Becky was a major event for the entertainment industry. Her homecoming after weeks of exile attracted 24% of the viewing figures as she made another apology and offered further explanation for her now-terminated affair with married rock singer Enon Kawatani.

Her original tearful press conference in January where she apologized after a tabloid exposed the affair was a bizarre event, primarily because she did a good job of looking remorseful without actually stating directly what she had done.

But the details are widely now known and she gave more of them herself on Friday, the first TV appearance in 104 days for the one-time most successful female talent in Japan. All in all, Enon Kawatani is emerging as the villain of the piece, even though his career has apparently been unaffected by the scandal.

Kawatani, has since divorced his wife, though Becky made clear that she is no longer interested in him. However, reports surfacing that Kawatani’s ex-spouse is pregnant may continue to trouble Becky’s comeback. Similarly, former Morning Museum Mari Yaguchi, whose infidelity famously ended her marriage to another celebrity, has yet to make a full return to the mainstream. She recently appeared in a Nissin TV commercial sending up her history, though complaints led to the ad being taken off the air.

The Japanese entertainment’s hypocritical attitude towards adultery is well catalogued and the Becky scandal was said by some to exemplify this sexism. For the most part, the narrative goes, the men get away with it while the women see their reputations damaged, temporarily or permanently, as was the case with Mona Yamamoto. After two scandals with married men, Yamamoto’s career zigzagged before she finally got married and retired from show business. Becky’s return to her previous status may be difficult because so much of her appeal and on-screen personality rested on her girl-next-door innocence, which was proved untrue by her affair. Perhaps she should get married and reinvent herself as a different sort of entertainer altogether.

In addition to the Becky saga, adultery has been much in the public eye of late, thanks to the tabloid expose in February of politician Kensuke Miyazaki’s affair while his wife and fellow lawmaker was in hospital waiting to give birth. Miyazaki, who has since resigned his seat, had been lauded for setting an example by taking paternity leave. Again, as with Becky, it was the shock that the image he was projecting to the public was not the whole truth that magnified the backlash. If Miyazaki had just been another rising LDP politico, likely the tabloids wouldn’t have tailed him and even if they had discovered an affair, the response from his colleagues and voters would surely have been different. (The response from his wife, we imagine, would have been the same, and quite rightly so.)

And then in March there was sports writer and prospective politician, Hirotada Ototake, again brought down by a tabloid scoop that revealed his double life as a playboy and frequenter of Kabukicho establishments. Incredibly he managed to persuade his wife to apologize for him and even take on part of the blame.

Perhaps it is no coincidence, then, that this season there are currently four dramas on Japanese television dealign with adultery: Fukigen na Kajitsu on TV Asahi, Busujima Yuriko no Sekirara Nikki on TBS, Contrail–Crime and Love on NHK, and Boku no Yabai Tsuma on Fuji Television.

Of course, this is far from the first time that Japanese TV dramas have portayed the theme. You can find examples at least going back the 1970s. But the way that women are depicted has changed. Now the tone has shifted to female characters who happen to fall in love with men other than their husbands or boyfriends. It is more overt and positive, even if the women are also “wrongdoers”.

After the success of Hirugao in 2014, infidelity in Japan was reported to be trendy. Women saw the attractive leads (Aya Ueto, Michiko Kichise) doing something “wrong” (but which their husbands had perhaps got away with for years) but looking damn fine while doing it. Hirugao was also perfectly timed to ride the crest of another new development. When Ashley Madison launched in Japan in 2013, it gained 1 million members in nine months. Clearly there was a need for this kind of safe, convenient way to have an affair.

Art imitates life and life imitates art: Japanese television is seemingly reflecting this shift among women, from the dramas to the celebrities who appear on shows.

If you have ever attended a baseball or other sports event in Japan, you will likely have spotted the “beer girls“, also known as uriko. These happy-go-lucky ladies can be seen lugging large kegs of beer in backpacks around the stadium stands, invariably in a small uniform regardless of the weather, ever ready to dispense a cup of fresh lager for the thirsty crowds.

Typically aged between 16 and 25, they carry their wares of beer key, cups and snacks weighing up to 15kg (33 lbs)!

The Beer Hour Stadium Foamy Head Dispenser now brings the experience of being served by a beer salesgirl to the comfort your home.

Okay, so it doesn’t actually come with a cute twentysomething lady wearing a uniform and carrying the customarily bulky backpack (known as a “beer shoulder”). But the gun-style dispenser means you can pour a beer in seconds just by attach a can to the top and pressing the “trigger”. Then for the final touch, lightly shake the unit before pressing the back button to dispense cool froth.

In this amusingly sexist video, the manufacturer shows us the kind of experience you can recreate in the comfort of your home… and also the consumer being ruthlessly targeted.

This is actually the latest entry in Takara-Tomy’s best-selling series of “beer foamer” toys known as Beer Hour (it’s a pun, since “hour” sounds like “awa” or bubbles/froth in Japanese). These are designed to help you get a frothy head on a beer poured from a can, which in Japan is how a beer comes served in a bar or izakaya. While such a beverage would get sent back in many other countries, in Japan — especially in the humid summer — a cold froth on the head of a beer is very much what consumers expect and want.

The Beer Hour Stadium also continues the trend for food and drink “toys” that are practical cooking utensils but also fun, as well as the popularity of “cool beverage” items, especially hits like the Frozen Beer Slushie Maker by Kirin.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made a political song and dance out of his apparent efforts to create a “a society in which women shine”. However, it seems not everyone got the memo that female empowerment is hip. Sexism continues to lurk around every corner.

Only last week we had the travel agency offering to sit passengers next to “beautiful co-eds”. Then there was Kanagawa Prefecture’s misguided attempt to promote women in the workplace with an all-male line-up of company directors. And we have still to recover from 2014, when a female politician was jeered by male peers in the Tokyo Assembly.

Now along comes Kirin with the latest commercial for its beer, Nodogoshi.

In it, two (foreign) men attempt to get a pair of glamor models (played by Anna Konno and Moemi Katayama) to remove their clothes either by making them hot and sweaty, or blowing off their bikinis with a breeze.

Girl power indeed. The TV commercial is a marginally clever take on the Aesop fable of the North Wind and the Sun. As concepts go, it does trump most Japanese advertising, which consists of a celebrity smiling inanely as they hold up the product in question, so perhaps we should be grateful for small mercies.

Naysayers will remark that we probably shouldn’t expect much from a tongue-in-cheek beer commercial. Japan is hardly the only country where such “cheeky” and crass advertising exists. But another development has further highlighted how sexism seems prevalent in parts of popular culture.

The president of a woman’s university recently criticized Yasushi Akimoto, founder of AKB48 and its bevy of idol groups, for producing songs that degrade women.

Akimoto’s song promotes the idea that it is fine for girls to be “empty-headed” and that being intelligent is “meaningless” if you are “not loved. Needless to say, the song — “Einstein Yori Dianna Agron”, a B-side for a release by AKB48 spin-off group HKT48 — was described by Masami Ohinata as advancing a worldview rooted a century in the past.

On May 19th, Katsuya Okada unveiled the new logo of the newly formed political party, the Minshinto.

The Democratic Party, as it is called in English, was formed out of the merger of two other opposition parties from different sides of the center: Democratic Party of Japan, or Minshuto (who held power from 2009 to 2012), and the Japan Innovation Party, or Isshin no To.

The unusual merger has met with a muted response and has yet to give the opposition any perceivable boost in ratings or energy.

Okada boasted that the new logo, created by Hirokazu Mitamura, is “future-looking” and full of “vibrancy”.

Perhaps this will do the trick when it comes combatting to public apathy about the party? Not quite, it seems. People have rather been quick to point out possible plagiarism.

In the logo — chosen from 3,676 online submissions — there are two figures, perhaps representing the new-found unity of the parties, bending to form an M-like shape (hinting at the party name in Japanese).

However, recalling last year’s 2020 Olympics logo debacle, some have pointed out that the logo is strikingly similar to the logo for Imuraya, a Mie-based food manufacturer.

The party, though, claim to have already been aware of this accidental plagiarism issue and Okada personally checked with the company to secure their permission.

But the carping at the back doesn’t stop there. Others have also noted that the two figures have an unfortunately erotic undertone: is the red figure not “groping” the blue one?

After dazzling Tokyo with his Running Christmas Tree last year, everyone’s favorite gadget-creating foreigner is back with another inventive, gaudy device.

Joseph Tame’s latest project is Sakuraman, a superhero-inspired mobile way to ensure you have cherry blossom all year round.

Sakuraman provides a much-needed service: on-demand hanami (cherry blossom viewing parties).

Yes, because cherry blossom is not just for spring. Let the slickly produced video below tell the rest.

Here’s how Tame describes Sakuraman:

Japan’s cherry blossom season is truly one of the wonders of the world; a sudden bursting forth of billions of flowers across the country, transforming any landscape it touches, and signalling the end of the long cold winter.

It’s only natural that everyone would want to celebrate this transformation — and thus every year millions of people join friends and family under the trees for Cherry Blossom Viewing Parties (‘hanami’).

Over the past 10 years I’ve also enjoyed this phenomena, but it always struck me that it was far too short — the blossom would be going within a week.

There had to be a way to extend the joy. With today’s modern technology, surely there could be a solution that would allow anyone anywhere to enjoy the cherry blossom at any time…

It was with this in mind that I created SAKURAMAN, and for the past few weeks, I’ve been testing him out on the streets of Tokyo. For the first time, this year people have been able to enjoy the cherry blossom for far longer than just one week at the end of March.

Following successful beta testing, I’m happy to announce the full launch of SAKURAMAN.

So presuming you are not put off by a pink-colored foreigner looming over you while you enjoy a beer and a bite to eat, you can order Sakuraman to come to your picnic and provide some springtime atmosphere whatever time of year it is.

For more on the “beta testing” process, there’s a second video.

According to Tame, features of his wearable gadget include:

– Auto folding branches
– Retractable trees
– Night mode
– Retractable beer glasses
– Mobile app
– Starbucks compatible
– Built in party poppers
– Mobile video chat
– over 250 LEDs
– Detachable turf to sit on
– Touch audio system
– Mobile street lighting
– Compact and mobile

Okay, so Sakuraman may not exactly be the most serious wearable device to debut this year, but you’ve got to hand it to Tame: his imagination is impressive and he has the know-how and connections to convert his ideas into fully working products.

As we reported earlier in the year, Tame is part of the bustling maker culture scene in Tokyo and Sakuraman was actually conceived and built at Lowp, one of the latest coworking labs in the city.

The governor of Tokyo, Yoichi Masuzoe, is currently caught up in an expenses scandal that has been unfolding for the past few weeks in the pages of the press.

Masuzoe — a former scholar and the most powerful directly elected official in Japan — is under fire for his extravagant expenses, facing harsh criticism from the Japanese Communist Party and the media as well as the central government, former Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, and the governors of other prefectures whose expenses are dwarfed by Masuzoe’s. Initially combative, he has since backed down, apologized and admitted some inappropriate claims, including occasions when he claimed expenses for private functions.

There is speculation that the pressure on Masuzoe from his political opponents and the media might even be enough to force his resignation, which would be disastrous timing. It would mean a Tokyo gubernatorial election this summer before the Rio Olympics (which the governor has to attend for the handing-over ceremony) and another in four years’ time just before the Tokyo Olympics, which is already mired in its own scandals.

That being said, Masuzoe is by far the most cosmopolitan of all recent governors and likely the most competent. A former Upper House lawmaker, he speaks several languages and has made efforts to court the world stage for Japan’s capital.

Masuzoe’s ex-wife has come out and revealed some unpleasant stories about their marriage. Though much of Masuzoe’s colorful private life — several marriages, children born out of wedlock — was already known, certain details have been raked over on social media and in the press in recent days.

But one of the more curious things to reappear was not a sordid detail about an affair or alimony payments.

No, it’s a video game released 24 years ago.

In 1992, Coconuts Japan Entertainment released Yoichi Masuzoe: Famicom until Morning for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

The long-forgotten adventure game was selling on online auctions for ¥1,000 but is now going for 10 times the price.

Though discarded as a boring game in which you play out business meetings, the content of the video game has now proven more than a little ironic. It includes pithy words of advice from the Masuzoe avatar about not “mixing private and public”, almost exactly echoing the euphemistic phrase used to describe the allegation that his expenses are not wholly work-related.

One of the few resources about the game in English is currently Video Game Den, who have a good summary of the game content:

In this intra-office text adventure game, the player is put in the shoes of a businessman who has to instruct his secretary, give phone calls, act favorably to his peers, gain the favor of his boss and finally find out about the company’s factions. The game is divided into four different chapters. Once a chapter is completed, Yoichi Masuzoe asks the players a series of twenty questions. These quiz-questions, however, do not affect the gameplay and only seem to influence the ending of the game. The game’s controls are fairly straightforward — an action menu lets the player look around, pick and use items or talk to people from the active view. The bottom of the screen displays text or available choices. A simple password system allows the player to save his game at will.

So do you fancy playing Masuzoe’s game and listening to his career advice?

It’s the gift that keeps on giving: Tokyo’s station billboard promotions.

We continue to see interesting examples, especially in Shinjuku, from the “huggable” to the “scratchable”.

Many of these interactive and unusual billboards have involved the game industry as part of promotions for new game releases such as the Dragon Quest series.

The series is also responsible for this latest example of the trend, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Dragon Queen with this huge chalkboard artwork.

Measuring 14 meters long, the billboard at Shinjuku Station Metro Promenade (between the Marunouchi Line and Alta) — a common site for these promos — has been transformed into a giant black-and-white chalk mural promoting the release of Dragon Quest Heroes II: Twin Kings and the Prophecy’s End on May 27th.

Some are calling this the largest chalkboard artwork in the world.

The artwork by Rena Rena (known for her previous chalkboard work themed around the game Dark Souls III) uses white chalk on the blackboard to portray Slimes, Red Balzack, and more. It took Rena Rena a month to complete the mural.

Published by Square Enix, Dragon Quest first came out in 1986 and has become a sensation among role-playing games.

On display from May 23rd to May 29th, the installation cleverly harnesses the power of social media in a manner recalling the film Speed: once tweets containing the harsh tag #DQH2 exceed 5,000 by the end of May 24th, the blackboard will apparently be wiped clean of monsters from the following day. (Details of this are not fully clear from press materials at time of writing.)

So if you want to see the chalkboard in all its glory, go see it on May 24th before it starts to disappear!

Images via Eiga.com

This summer there will be an Upper House election in Japan and for the first time, those aged 18 and 19 can vote.

To raise awareness of this new enfranchisement, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has launched a new website called TOHYO-to. Meaning “vote capital”, the semi-animated video features two celebrities (Peko and Ryuchieru) receiving guidance on their new right to vote.

If that sounds a little dull, watch the quasi-psychedelic video to see how they make the theme more exciting for younger viewers.

On the website, you can make your own avatar and walk down a colorful digital street, passing Tokyo landmarks, before “voting” yourself into the ballot box. (Japanese users respond well to platforms where you can make your own character, such as the successful Sanrio Chanrio website.)

The government also installed a pop-up in front of 109 in Shibuya to promote their campaign. It also made this video featuring a well-known female comedy duo. They are trying on kimono in the style of 20-year-olds attending a coming-of-age ceremony, though the point of the video is to raise awareness that the traditional age of becoming an adult is now partially shifting to 18 thanks to the new enfranchisement.

Voter turnout is increasingly on the decline for elections in Japan, especially Upper House, which is seen as the less important chamber. In particular, most voters skewer older (arguably one of the reasons that the conservative Liberal Democratic Party tends to win) and younger voters feel disenchanted with the options on the ballot paper.

The student activist group SEALDs, which was regularly lauded in the media last year, has continued its efforts to encourage young people to vote, including recently launching a fashion line and organizing an upcoming “Don’t Trash Your Vote” pop-up at Parco, Shibuya.

Themed cafes and pop-ups are the new bread and butter of Tokyo marketing.

Following Sega’s Puyopuyo!! Quest cafe, the Sailor Moon cafe, and the Miffy cafe, this latest example turns to a foreign franchise best known for its colorful, cuddly characters.

The Elmo to Yukai na Nakamatachi Cafe (Elmo and His Fun Friends Cafe) has opened in Harajuku, running from May 1st to June 30th.

Sesame Street aired in Japan in a dubbed version on NHK from the 1970s. A special Japanese co-production version has been broadcast on TV Tokyo since 2004. Though not as iconic or a staple of childhood TV as in the States, most Japanese people are familiar with Elmo, Big Bird, Cookie Monster and the other main characters.

At the Sesame Street cafe, you can sample such dishes as Elmo’s Chicken Curry (¥1,600), Elmo’s Harajuku Burger (¥1,300) or Cookie Monster’s Pancake (¥1,300). Needless to say, these dishes are cooked and served in ways that resemble the adorable characters. Sesame Street’s central educational purpose is not on the menu, it seems.

Here you can see the drinks on offer, complete with foam with the faces of Oscar, Big Bird and co.

One of the major aims of these pop-ups cafe is, along with promoting the overall franchise, flogging merchandise. As such, you can buy a whole host of goods exclusive to the cafe, including original t-shirts, towels, bags, and more.

There is also a “photo room” with some characters for visitors to pose and take groups snaps.

Oh, dear. A big Japanese corporation has done it again: made a marketing campaign that is causing offense to some.

Kirin is promoting its recently relaunched tea product Namacha with a new online campaign called Greeting Namacha.

It is themed around Japanese greetings, which it says are “way too difficult”.

The whole link between the campaign concept and the product is actually a bit obscure, except for the word “greeting” being a pun on “green tea” as eluded to in the design of the website title.

Part of the campaign features a Japanese man having trouble with a “too friendly” greeting by a foreigner (in this case, a black male).

To be fair, the foreigner-versus-Japanese video is just one of several scenarios explored in the campaign and the production values are pretty good. This was clearly carefully conceived.

But there is a fine line between a tongue-in-cheek joke about stereotypes and actually perpetuating those stereotypes.

The issue here is that there is no such thing as an all-encompassing “foreigner” like Kirin is suggesting, especially when it comes to greetings. The nuances between nationalities, cultures, races and ethnic groups are manifold, and this is particularly obvious with greetings. Not everyone hugs, even though it is indeed amusing to investigate the “rules” of the procedure. (We did like the comparison of the pre-hug open-arm stretch to a peacock.)

At the end of the day, of all the “foreign” stereotypes that could have been used, this is a pretty innocuous one.

But the very fact that Kirin choose the “foreigner greeting” as the first example on the website and even included some English prominently indicates that they possibly thought this campaign would be well received by foreign visitors and residents, or even non-Japanese overseas. Kirin has also been pushing the campaign on Facebook and the “foreigner greeting” video has been popping up in feeds as a promoted post. On Kirin’s official Facebook page, the post with the video has English comments from non-Japanese users accusing the video of racism, and at time of writing even has one user suggesting that his similar comment was deleted by Kirin.

That being said, we certainly think it’s too strong to use the word “racist” for this arguably misguided web campaign. However, we have seen these kinds of TV commercials before, including “fake nose” foreigners in advertising campaigns for ANA and Toshiba, so there are clearly ingrained stereotypes that need to be exploded. It should be surprising that major corporations would risk such campaigns, but it isn’t. Kirin is a Dentsu client, as are presumably ANA and Toshiba. In its outlook, Dentsu is actually a highly domestic ad agency. Having worked with them on multiple occasions, we have direct experience of how Dentsu staff often lack genuine international awareness. Expect these kinds of campaigns to continue for the foreseeable future.

As we get closer to the release of the new Japanese Godzilla movie, Godzilla Resurgence, this summer in domestic theaters, expect a heap of tie-in merchandise.

So far, the best we have seen is the S.H. Monster Arts Kou Kyou Kyoku Godzilla 1989 by Tamashii Nations.

Part of the Kou Kyou Kyoku series of models from S.H. Monster Arts that have sound, music and light effects, this real collector’s item is a replica of the rare “Biogoji” look of Japan’s most famous kaiju as seen in the 1989 film Godzilla vs Biollante.

Set for release in October, the beautifully rendered model plays the soundtrack from the almost forgotten (and relatively unsuccessful) entry in the Godzilla franchise in addition to three kinds of sound effects, including Godzilla’s roar and footsteps.

It also lights up thanks to its integrated LEDs on the spine and in the mouth, creating brilliant scenes at night.

This article by Lily Crossley-Baxter first appeared on Tokyo Cheapo.

If cats and rabbits just don’t do it for you any more — how about a hedgehog? Roppongi’s latest animal cafe has these prickly characters available to be — well, not stroked exactly — but definitely carefully cradled. Harry Harinezumi Cafe takes its name from the Japanese word for hedgehog, harinezumi, which translates to “needle-mouse”, and after a few minutes holding one, you might decide it’s a more fitting name than ours.

Photo by Lily Crossley-Baxter

Getting There

Animal cafes in Tokyo are as varied as they are ethically questionable — from cats to owls to lizards, you can pet them all. Perfect for a city where most apartments don’t allow pets and let’s be honest, they’re just fun. The latest addition of these prickly, pink-bellied, pointy-nosed little critters might not spring to mind as top of your petting list, but they’re popular pets. Harry’s in Roppongi is a recently opened cafe and shop with over twenty hedgehogs and another floor of rabbits. The cafe is located down a quiet backstreet and can be easy to miss — some Australians we met had been wandering for hours trying to find it (dedication to hedgehogs) — but if you look for the rabbit signs, rather than hedgehogs, you’ll be fine.

Photo by Lily Crossley-Baxter

Getting in

Featured as the “light news’ section across the world in past weeks, the cafe has become a bit of a hot-spot and is pretty popular with tourists, cute couples and teenage girls alike. You can book the cafe slots in advance, and there are plenty each day (between 50 and 60) but they do seem to fill up about two days in advance. They are only bookable by the hour, and cost ¥2,000 per person on a weekday, and ¥2,600 on weekends. If this seems too pricey — there is another option. If you are prepared to queue, half-hour slots are available at half the price — but waits can be between an hour and two hours, so go prepared with snacks and a drink. This is what we did, and on a cloudy Monday we only waited 30 minutes — so you might be lucky (but watching those with reservations walk past smugly is definitely not helpful, so try not to look as they saunter past). Be prepared to be largely ignored by the staff if you have no reservation, there is a queue area outside, and once there you just wait — there’s no list of names or anything, they will just come and get you when there’s a space.

Hedgehogs!

So, when you finally get in—the fun begins (almost). You have to read the hedgehog guidelines about handling and care, and decide if you want to get hedgehog snacks (¥500, weird mealwormy things) and camera photos or phone ones. You are free to take all the pictures you like on your phone, but real cameras cost ¥500. Ok, NOW you can have fun! The room has about 12 tanks, for want of a better word, with a few hedgehogs in each. There’s a mixture of “Salt and Pepper”, “Pied”, “Cinnamon” and “Albino” but we were less fussed about specific coloring and more: “Please just let me hold the cutest one!”

Photo by Lily Crossley-Baxter

Photo by Lily Crossley-Baxter

You get a hedgehog box, and can choose a new friend/squirmy, scrappy needle-mouse. Only staff can take hedgehogs in and out, and when you hold them they have to stay over the box, so they can’t fall. Basically, just be nice to them. They are a little jumpy at first, but lots of people’s soon curled up and went to sleep—leading to adorable pictures all-round. You can change if you like, but not too many times. They are prickly (you laugh, but you’ll find yourself announcing it in surprise too) and quite adventurous in a scrabbly way — or mine was, anyway — so you have to keep your wits about you. My friend, who shall hereby be known as the hedgehog-whisperer, had no trouble and soon had a curled-up-ball-of-cuteness in her hands. They didn’t bite, and mine would lick my fingers which was really cute (once I got over the flashbacks to childhood hamster attacks).

Photo by Lily Crossley-Baxter

Photo by Lily Crossley-Baxter

The drinks are self-service and limited, but to be honest we forgot about them entirely. You are also free to bring your own food and drink into the cafe, but no alcohol. Disinfectant is readily available and a good idea, as you will get hedgehog-wee on you at some point no doubt. We didn’t go for the snacks, so not sure what the effect was, but probably very cute.

Photo by Lily Crossley-Baxter

The cafe is actually a hedgehog shop as they are popular pets in Tokyo, primarily with girls who can’t have cats/dogs. You can choose one you like and get kitted out too. Prices are high though, this isn’t a light decision (nor should it be), with small ones starting at ¥30,000. The upstairs also has rabbits, and there are geckos! These we did try — and they’re really cute. Friends who have visited before preferred these to the hedgehogs, so you might surprise yourself.

Photo by Lily Crossley-Baxter

So if you fancy a trip to hang out with the needle-mice, then head to Roppongi. You’ll leave with possibly confused feelings about whether you actually like them, prickled hands and potentially a new found love for geckos, but definitely with a smile on your face.

Read more and see a map on Tokyo Cheapo

There is opportunism and then there is plain misunderstanding.

A politician from the newly christened Democratic Party have seized on an overseas cartoon to support their belief that the other G7 leaders could not wait to get away from Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe.

Assessment of the summit so far has been muted. Very little concrete seems to have come out of it other than the massive expense footed by the Japanese taxpayer (including a very costly venue that will be demolished, the process of which will also cost a small fortune). Moreover, the summit itself was overshadowed by the intense police presence in the Ise area and disproportionately increased security in Tokyo, not to mention the murder case of a young woman in Okinawa by a contractor for the United States military and then President Obama’s landmark visit to Hiroshima.

In the face of such a prosaic summit with so few tangible results, local media and opposition lawmakers have been parsing the overseas response for clues as to international opinion of Prime Minister Abe’s mostly derided economic policies.

At a meeting on May 30th, Kazunori Yamanoi proudly held up the cartoon, which depicts a giant wave with a large mouth while a small boat with the G7 leaders precariously floats nearby. It shows, Yamanoi pronounced confidently, that the overseas media was mocking Abe and his lack of influence with foreign leaders.

Unfortunately, Mr Yamanoi completely missed the point of the original.

The cartoon by Peter Brookes, which appeared in the May 27th edition of The Times where he is resident political cartoonist, actually depicts a “horror scenario” of Boris Johnson as a wave about to swallow the G7 leaders. The British prime minister, David Cameron, is saying: “So good to get away from that bloody idiot!” He means Johnson, not Abe. The face in the wave is instantly recognisable to British people as Johnson, with the crest cleverly standing in for the politico’s trademark blond mop.

Clearly inspired by Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa as a nod to the location of the recent G7 summit in Japan, the cartoon is actually very specific to the current British political climate. The country is embroiled in a massive political debate over membership of the EU ahead of a national referendum on the subject later in June. Boris Johnson, erstwhile mayor of London and hairdresser’s despair, has come out as one of the most prominent voices on the “Brexit” campaign advocating, which has alienated him from his quondam ally David Cameron, who is heading the campaign to stay in the EU.

Many see Johnson’s stance as a cynical tactic by the well-educated Conservative politician (and former representative of the most international city in Europe) to appeal to his party’s grassroots in the run-up to a challenge for the leadership. This is geared to happen some time before the next election in 2020 as David Cameron has said he will not stand again, leaving the path open for several candidates. Boris, as he is affectionately known to the British public, is one of the expected heavyweights vying for the top job.

Yamanoi very much got the wrong end of the stick with this one. The “G7 boat”, if you look closely, even includes Shinzo Abe among its passengers, along with Cameron, Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, and Francois Hollande. Context, as they say, is everything.

Nice try, Kazunori. Better luck next time.

One of the big stories this year so far has been virtual reality.

From a VR board game to virtual reality gaming centers around Tokyo, the fever will surely keep on building until the release of the Sony PlayStation VR in October.

A new crowdfunding project in Japan is aiming to create a virtual reality way to experience Edo, or historical Tokyo.

The project is currently around 10% of the way to their ¥5 million target with 23 days to go. We hope they make it because it’s a brilliant idea.

They plan to recreate four famous areas from historical Edo — Nihonbashi, Edo Castle, Asakusa and the daimyo (baron) mansions — and the more money they raise, the more they can create.

Users will be able to wear a head-mounted display and feel like they are walking around Edo, brought back to life in remarkable detail through CGI 3D-modelling.

Funders can go one step further and be integrated into history. A samurai or geisha in the VR Edo will be modelled after funders’ faces while their names will be written on a banner featured in the simulated world.

The project is by Avatra LLC, whose director, Shinkyo Oishi, is a Buddhist monk, so this really is a marriage of old and new. (As we know, monks in Japan have a habit of doing unusual things.) The CG art will be handled by Nobuo Nakamura.

Here is some test footage. The streets and buildings are empty but in the finished version there will be a full population of Edoites in the experience.

The latest bizarre marketing campaign by a Japanese beer brand purports to turn you into a voyeur spying on a beautiful girl’s life.

Can Shiten shows the world from the perspective (“shiten” in Japanese) of a can of beer. The beverage in question is Nodogoshi, Kirin’s dirt-cheap lager that is a staple of wallet-conscious salarymen.

You can choose to “watch” Karoi Shiraishi, a 26-year-old editor, or Kenichi Toba, a 27-year-old consultant for an overseas firm, while they relax at night in their homes in Tokyo.

If that’s not creepy enough for you, feel free to spy on the “aftermath” of a group date, where the women share their impressions of the prospective partners they met.

Of course, the frame is decided to imitate the shape of a can but also makes it perfect for watching on your phone (a gimmick recently exploited by a music video in Japan).

The campaign seems intended to present Nodogoshi as not just a drink for cheapo businessmen, but also a refreshing sud for young and hip metropolitan types to enjoy.

Kirin also recently marketed Nodogoshi with a bikini-clad and anti-feminist commercial, and the brewer also turned heads with its arguably “racist” online campaign for a tea drink.

The other big news story about Japan’s major beer manufacturers is their dubious entry into the craft beer market.

Recent years have witnessed incredible growth for small and medium-sized microbreweries. On top of the rise in craft beer bars and restaurants rapidly increasing in Tokyo and around the country, the brewers have enjoyed retail success with their products expanding into supermarkets and convenience stores (especially Lawson), branded bars like Yona Yona’s four in Tokyo. Even import craft beer like Brew Dog was such a runaway hit it opened its own bar in Roppongi.

After years of demoting their own brands through “fake beer” and other cheaper offerings, the big beer makers attempted to hijack the craft beer renaissance that Japan is experiencing (the first “boom” actually being the early 1990s). Suntory released several colorfully packaged beers under a “Craft Select” label. Asahi followed with a seasonal Craftsmanship series while even Sapporo has a Craft Label pale ale.

Kirin opened a chic craft brewpub in a redeveloped part of Daikanyama, one of Tokyo’s most tony of districts. Spring Valley Brewery has become a genuine hit, attracting around 260,000 visitors in its first year.

However, not all the brewers’ efforts have met with success. Connoisseurs immediately scoffed at the drinks being pushed as “craft” by the brewers and regular consumers seemed to agree: Asahi announced on June 1st that it would not be expanding its craft beer range after sluggish sales following its entry into the market in February last year.