Been reading up on Augment Reality or AR for short. It’s a field where science fiction meets reality. The latest is from Japan, Cyber Maid Alice. With a webcam and some paper cubes, you can manipulate a virtual doll and change her clothes and interact with the virtual character. While there is a hefty price tag for Cyber Maid Alice, ad agencies and magazines are already using this technology from soft drinks to baseball cards.
For the original TechCrunch article go here.
I manage to download the Yuki Nagato papercraft from the Imperishable Night blog before both the file and the blog dissapeared. Yuki Nagato is the 3 year old alien construct from show, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
I’m slowly keeping track of the construction of the model in the new bento Otaku section in our review wiki. The finished papercraft will be displayed at Neo Tokyo anime store. Just don’t expect it anytime soon.
You can follow the article to see how far I’m progressing.
Even though I cancelled the Cosplay Skate, I decided to dust off my old pair of skates and head down to the Covent Garden Market rink away. My music was from a CD player and pair of PC speakers I stuck in the side pouches of my backpack. I lasted about 30 feet on the ice before my feet cried no more for pair of skates I haven’t worn since I was a teen. Just as well, my CD player batteries died faster in the cold.
I headed to Tanakaya for some warm miso soup then went back to rink. As I was coming back in, I notced a table of girls with some familar dolls I been seeing at anime conventions more and more.
The top group of pictures were dolls about 18 inches tall while the bottom picture was dolls only 6-8 inches tall. The trio of girls were just meeting together showing their dolls when I came by. They had mail ordered all of their dolls, their clothes and the wigs.
It seems to me this hobby is growing that there is relatively none or little North American suppliers. Though I not certain if the regular North Amercian doll collector crowd has really looked at this current trend. Maybe because the dolls are not that of traditional dolls. Still the local doll stores should look at this new injection of new blood for it’s future.
This might make things easier if a existing doll stores takes up cause of bringing imports of doll parts from Japan. Enough stores might help get a distributor for these products.
It was fun to meet another segment of the anime community. No doubt, we’ll be seeing more of these dolls in the conventions this year.
– editted Jan 27, 2007
I’ve finished completing the translations of original bentoOTAKU html pages over to blog posts. While I still have work to do in redirecting every html page over to the new reality, I left some resemblance of the original pages up so I’m not forever re-encoding the entire site.
The old pages will exist while the search engines to readjust to. It does mean that I will be able to write new bento articles without having to rewrite everything. Since the original posts have been back dated to when they were originally written, newbies may want to check out these old gems. Here is a list of those posts.
bentoCULTURE
bentoFOOD
bentoGAMES
bentoKAWAII
bentoKIKAI no KIMYO
I will be adding more articles in the coming year. Enjoy!
It was over two years ago I started the bento OTAKU section on Anime London. The intent was to bring snippets of Japanese culture and other tidbits that were sent to me by a friend in Japan.
It was always interesting to see what odditity would come my way and try to make an article out of it. Sadly I have not kept up with bento OTAKU and the secion has gathered dust and neglect over the past year.
To that, I hate to say the quirky section of Anime London is dead. Dead but not gone. As if by some Monty Python skit, bento will have new life on this blog. I’m in the process of transferring each article over to the blog under the bento category.
I’ll be postdating the articles to match the original posts when they were made. Tedious task but worth the effort. From there , with the blog software, I can actually upkeep bento (OTAKU) in a more timely matter.
The first article, Saru Saru Go Away!, has been transfered and I hope to have the rest transfered by New Year.
So it seems someone has setup a maid cafe in the wilds of Scarbaorough by Pacific Mall. Has anyone been to this place?
iMaid Café
1883 McNicoll Ave. (at Kennedy Rd.), Units 20 to 22, 416-335-6243, imaidcafe.com
I must admit it is a good article without profiling it as geek place (otaku). So why isn’t there one here in London? Maybe I should check the Bubble Tea places here in London and see if staff dress up. 😉
As weird as it looks, someone has come up with USB flash keys in your favorite Asian foods.
This only begs to say when some otaku will eat one of these flash drives or more likely try plugging real food into the computer ports.
It’s been awhile since my friend and mylsef have traded gifts from our culture. Surprisingly it seems we both have the same problem of finding soveniers from our respective countries that isn’t Made in China. 🙂
It might surprise alot of anime fans out there that Japanese are just as interested in our shows and culture as we are about ours. They see anime 24-7 on 3 to 4 speciality networks as well as regular broadcasts. It can be boring for them.
What is hard for me is finding what is truely Canadian or interseting to send back. Maybe those out there can leave a comment on what is truly Canadian and small (and legal) to send via Canada Post.
Any way, I’ll be posting more blogs on the package contents later on.
Well I not only manage to pick up the extra camcorder battery I ordered but also the book I ordered at Chapters, Making Shoji by Toshio Odate.
The book has lots of pictures and annidotes of Toshio Odate apprenticeship. I’ve yet had time to put it into the practice and make the window blinds I want for my room with no view. Still it looks like this should be a summer project. For now, I have a sheet covering the window which allows some light in during the day.
Well I spent the day in Toronto shopping and came back with a new toy I will be using soon and something to improve my view.
The toy is a Samsung SC-D353 miniDV camcorder with memory stick. Since I have found that a digital camera alone is sorefully lacking in capturing the finer details of a masquerade. I hope that this camcorder can take up the slack. With better handling of low light and longer optical zoom, we can hope.
As mentioned before I have a room with no view. After picking up the camcorder I heade down Queen St. W to The Paper Place, (formerly Japanese Paper Place) to pickup some Shoji paper to make Japanese paper panels to replace the curtains.
I picked up a roll of the Basic Shoji paper to try. However, they were fresh out of the book, Shoji. I didn’t find the book at the book store they suggest though I could order it here in town.
animelondon 