Engrish Brog
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Some foreigners placed a small video camera on a conveyor belt in a “Kaiten Sushi” restaurant in Japan, and filmed the customers and the kitchen. I thought it was fascinating to watch everyone’s reactions: 

Here is a quick transcript of the kitchen scene: 
Woman in brown: “Hey, what is this? The camera is rollling.”
Older woman: “What?  Oh [...]

Just in case you all haven’t seen this video, I give you the now infamous Korean Drummer (starts 15 seconds in): 

In case you are interested, there is a whole backstory on the drummer at: KoreanDrummer.com

The Roomba has some competition out of Korea - the iClebo robot vacuum. This is the English Engrish promotional video: 

Even though it is spelled iClebo, he keeps on pronouncing it “iCrebo”. Weird.

I ran across this video of ABBA singing Tiger on Japanese TV back in the 70’s. The Japanese dancers take up more real estate up front than the band - it seems like it was filmed for them. I personally found the dancing pretty funny: 

I think this is a cool application for the Segway. I wonder about the liability issues though - I can see people falling over when they hit the side of a hill (see the scene from 0:26 in). They probably have people sign a waiver beforehand.

On one Japanese TV show, Obama does some cheesy magic and one pretty cool card trick with a lemon.
Note: The Japanese love Obama so I believe that this TV show was not meant to be mean spirited or racist (although some people might deem it a bit insensitive?).

Found by way of the excellent blog Japan Probe.

In doing research for yesterday’s entry about “Fever Star Wars” pachinko, I ran across these funny videos from Japanese tv. They have been up on Youtube for a while, but it is worth a look if you haven’t seen them before (only 30 seconds each).  
Round 1:

Round 2:

Not sure how Sankyo, a pachinko (= semi-gambling) company, was able to obtain a Star Wars licensing agreement with Lucas - I am guessing it was lots of $$. They call the new line of machines “Fever Star Wars”, and there is a whole commercial campaign around it. All the commercials have that quirky Japan sensibility, and [...]

I always loved the miniature trucks in Japan - I never tire of their cute compact size. Now someone is doing full speed drifting effects on one in what looks like a parking lot: 

The Sony Building in Ginza is famous for showcasing Sony’s new technological gadgets. They have had this “melody stairs” thing for a little while, but someone figured out secret commands for it. Apparently if you step on the top or bottom stair 30 times in a row it goes into an Arpeggio chord - wherein the [...]