Stories, tangents, or otherwise experienced.
Photo by Rob J. Brooks, reused under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
My blog is ten years old today. (Today also roughly marks me having been online for half my life.) I have a lot of navelgazing to do in the body of this post, but to sum it up – if you’re reading this, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
Touch Arcade and Techcrunch have details on ngmoco:)‘s acquisition of Freeverse Software. This has a lot of implications for the iPhone software market, but I’ll let the business wonks talk about that.
Freeverse is entwined in the last 15 years of my life in ways that few things can compare. Their games and software toys helped keep me sane during high school. When my life went into a slight free-fall during college, I became anchored with an internship with them.
There’s this expectation most Americans have that there are many strange things that you will encounter in Japan. This is not untrue. An abridged list of these things, some of which have been mentioned previously in passing:
UFO Catchers filled with Snuggle Bear dolls.
The Chelsea Hotel, in Shibuya.
Bloodtype Bath, previously mentioned, currently available at RanKing RanQueen in Shibuya.
Hiphopsicles, which “makes eight funky-fresh ice cubes”. Available at KIDDYLAND.
The Tamagotchi Store, which appeared to be selling Tamagotchi Doughnuts, in Harajuku.
A giant pair of nail clippers in our hotel room, with text that reads:
I want to sing with
a romantic scene.
It perfectly fits
my private time.
A fountain, labeled as having “Naturally Pure Hudson River Water”, at Tokyo DisneySea.
And yes, our hotel room did feature a Toto Washlet toilet, in its own room separate from the bath and shower. With “front and rear cleansing options” and a heated seat, it makes American toilets pale in comparison. I wish we could get one in our apartment.