House with an underground balcony

November 19, 2009 @ 8:09 pm

The very thought of a balcony makes me think of a place jutting out from a building several floors up. But in Japan, architect Yukiharu Suzuki has designed the Sukiya House, a very modern looking home with a unique underground tunnel that also serves as a balcony.

What We Do Is Secret has a bunch of more photos of this beautiful place. If I ever get to live on a mountainside, I’d want to incorporate this into my home design.

Portable and foldable solution to packing a bike

November 19, 2009 @ 8:55 am

BIKE WRAP made by Jooks from STEADFAST on Vimeo.

Prolly posted about the Bike Wrap, a foldable soft-case for bikes made by Jooks in Japan. The Bike Wrap folds flat and carries all of the walls needed to whisk your disassembled bike away with care.

Japanese Dole Banana commercial

October 24, 2009 @ 4:24 pm

I really don’t even think they bother trying to make sense in Japan. As long as the product’s being shown with some sort of Japanese celebrity, I guess that’s all that matters to them. SUCCESS.

Pentax K-x Kore Ja Nai camera

October 23, 2009 @ 1:08 am

I already knew the Pentax K-x digital SLR was going to come in rainbow colors, but I had no idea that Pentax had in mind to release the K-x in the colors of Japan’s robot toy, Kore Ja Nai (I’m not even going to pretend I knew what Kore Ja Nai was before writing this post…apparently it’s a big thing in Japan).

Anyway, Pentax is making only 100 of these colorful versions and all of them will go on sale starting November. Peep the gallery below.

Writing In The Air by Shinichi Maruyama

October 13, 2009 @ 10:30 pm

Reader Sergio sent in this link today to Shinichi Maruyama, a Japanese artist who writes and paints in the sky by photographing black ink with water. Maruyama’s series, some of which are shown here, is called “Kusho” and it literally could mean any number of things alluding to emptiness, the sky, space and calligraphy or handwriting.

To photograph the images in “Kusho”, Shinichi Maruyama uses advanced photographic strobe technology to capture movement at 7500th to 20,000th of a second. Check out the images below and see more from this amazing photo series at Shinichi Maruyama’s website.

Slow-motion video of Japanese people running wildly at the camera

October 12, 2009 @ 7:37 pm

This video made me so happy! And it solidifies my thoughts about getting a camera that can shoot at high frame rates. [via]