Win What You Want

Flutterscape (if you haven’t figured it out by now) is a site that sells Japanese goods… with a twist. Regular people in Japan take pictures of items in their local area (at stores, and such), and then they put those pictures up on Flutterscape with a description, price, and so on. They buy the product from their local store when you pay for the item (your money goes to Flutterscape and is kept safe until Flutterscape gets the item to ship to you), and then you get the product a little bit later. Because of this business model, there are a ton of fun things on the site… which makes it hard for me to choose what I want to giveaway, and why I want you to choose for me.

Everyone has different things that they want, and everyone wants something ridiculous from Japan, so now’s your chance. You can choose ~$200 worth of goods from Flutterscape.com and win it (then get it shipped to your home).

How The Contest Works

This is a pretty high-prize contest, so the contest rules are a little more difficult (compared the the previous two).

You do have two choices, though. You can either write a blog post somewhere (I like WordPress, if you don’t have a blog right now and want to create one), or you can create a video and upload it to YouTube. Both have equal weight in terms of scoring, so choose the one you like most. Here’s how the contest works:

1. Go to Flutterscape.com and find approximately $200 worth of things you’d want to win. It can be whatever you want as long as it’s found on Flutterscape.
2. Write a blog post or make a video telling me why you want/deserve these things you picked out. Be creative!
3. In the blog post / in the YouTube description section, link to the items you talk about / want to win, so I can make sure they exist and you’re not making stuff up.
4. Send your entry to contests@tofugu.com. Contest ends July 21, 2010.

Scoring system is a combination of random and preference. I’m going to take my favorite blog posts and my favorite videos, and then I’ll probably amidakuji them to pick a random winner out of my favorite 6-8 entries.

There you have it. ANYTHING YOU WANT. I’m really looking forward to seeing what you want. Feel free to link to your entries in the comments as well! Okay! Go ahead, get started! Questions? Pop them in the comments. So, what do you want to win?

P.S. If you like funny Japanese products, you should follow @flutterscape on Twitter.

Related posts:

1. How To Buy Anything From Japan With FlutterScape [+Giveaway]
2. 8 Ways to Win Unlimited Japanese Lessons (and counting)
3. Two (or Three) More Days To Win These Flashcards

I’m guessing a lot of you know how to type in Japanese (hint: you don’t need a Japanese keyboard), but did you know about all the “hidden” special characters you can type out while you’re in Japanese input mode? You aren’t only limited to hiragana, katakana, romaji, and kanji. There are a score of other weird characters you can use to make your text a lot more interesting, you know? Here’s a lot of them (mostly the good ones) with an explanation of what they are and how to get them to show up!

Typing Musical Notes and Notation in Japanese

One of the things you’ll see quite often when reading Japanese blogs / text messages is various music-related symbols. There are a bunch of them, but they can all be called by the same word. It’s just like when you type in a Japanese word and hit space to see what kanji you can choose from, except this time you type in a Japanese word to show a list of possible symbols you can use.

So, as long as you know the word you can get the symbols for it! Let’s start with おんぷ (above). If you don’t know how to read hiragana, perhaps it’s time to learn how to read hiragana?

Notes: おんぷ

By typing in おんぷ, you get access to all kinds of musical notes.

♩　♫　♪　♬

Beyond musical notes, though, you can type other music related things.

Sharp:　しゃーぷ

Flat:　ふらっと

If you read these out, you’ll notice that they’re just readings of the words “sharp” and “flat.” If you hit space after typing しゃーぷ or ふらっと, you’ll get yourself the following sharp / flat symbols.

♯　♭

If you want to “jazz up” (har dee har har) your text, you can use some of these musical notations. Yee Haw! ♬

Typing Shapes In Japanese

If you can type musical notes, you should be able to type simple shapes, too, right? To type shapes in Japanese, you pretty much only have to know the word for the shape, hit space a few times after you type it in, and find the shape and type of shape you want.

Squares: しかく

□　■　◇　◆

Triangles: さんかく

△　▲　▽　▼　▷ ▶　◁　◀

Circles: まる

○　●　◎　◉　◯

Stars: ほし

☆　★　※　＊

Arrows: やじるし

→　←　↑　↓　⇄　⇅　⇔　⇦　⇧　⇨　⇩　☜　☝　☞　☟

Hearts: はーと

♡　♥

These shapes are pretty simple. If you want to get a little more complicated, there are even more options in the “symbols” category.

Typing “Symbols”

This is where things start getting interesting, I think (and possibly a lot less useful). These symbols include playing card symbols and more.

Playing Card Symbols: とらんぷ

とらんぷ (or trump) are what playing cards are called. When you type this in, you get the clubs, diamonds, spades, and hearts symbols.

♠　♣　♥　♦　♡　♢　♧　♤

Beyond trump cards, there are a number of other symbols as well, typed in a couple of different ways.

Emoji: えもじ

☎　♨　〄　〠

〠 is a variant postal mark

〄 shows that a product complies with the Japanese industrial standard

♨ looks like a cup of java but actually has to do with hot springs (which Japan has a lot of)

☎ is a telephone symbol. You might see this next to a telephone number.

Postal: ゆうびん

〒　〠

You might see these symbols on letters or on a Japanese address (especially the first one).

Other Characters?

There are a few more things you can type in using Japanese input, but nothing all that interesting. The ones I’ve written about above are the best and most useful (unless you’re typing out a lot of math, or something). If you are interested in the other ones, check out the Wikipedia article or this article.

Now, I fully expect all your Tofugu comments to be full of musical notes and onsen symbols. Have at it!

P.S. Interested in business? Check out my business blog.

P.P.S. If you can type 140 special characters in Japanese, you should follow Tofugu on Twitter.

No related posts.

As if Twitter itself wasn’t a big enough time waster, right? This is a Japanese flash game (so is this) that takes your Twitter icon and pits you against another Twitter icon. After you’ve chosen the opponents, Twitter icons are placed on the battlefield, and they break up into a bunch of tiny little pieces, which charge at each other and duke it out. What I learned from all this? The Tofugu Twitter icon is very, very weak.

Tofugu Vs. Gakuranman

You’d think with all that Yellow, @gakuranman would turn tail and flee. Nope, he went right for the throat, and took me down quickly.

Since he wins, he gets a link back to his Japan-blog (go check it out).

Tofugu vs. WhatJapanThinks

Since WhatJapanThinks is such an intellectually stimulating blog, I thought the Twitter account (@whatjapanthinks) wouldn’t be able to take more than a couple of Fugu-slaps to the face (which have glasses, of course).

It even had fewer pixels to fight with. Turns out, each pixel was way tougher than any of mine. I was in for a pretty quick defeat.

Tofugu Vs. Flutterscape

Since FlutterScape is full of pink, I thought “easy.” You may be able to buy cool Japanese stuff from Flutterscape, I can win victory…with luck, or something.

Wrong as usual, look at all that Pink! @Flutterscape was a monster.

Tofugu Vs. RainbowHill

I knew from the beginning I couldn’t win this one. Look how solid his face is. It just drove through my forces, all the while blogging about Japanese things. I had no chance, @rainbowhill.

Tofugu Vs. Lang-8

This is the only one that I won… and I kinda feel bad, since I love Lang-8 for Japanese study so much. Plus, their Twitter logo is the thing that tells me when there’s some scheduled maintenance going on.

Tofugu Vs. ChrisGaunt

When Chris isn’t blogging about Japanese or Figures, he’s using his Twitter account to destroy me on the battlefield. Chalk this one up as another loss for @tofugu.

Tofugu Vs. PinkTentacle

One of my favorite J-blogs. It’s no wonder @PinkTentacle used a quarter of the pixels to take me down… fast. I had no chance.

Let’s Play!

Well, it’s not really multiplayer, but I have no doubt that your Twitter account will utterly demolish my Twitter account. Pop us into this game, and send me a tweet to @tofugu telling me how badly you beat me. You should also follow the people above on Twitter, RSS, etc., they’re awesome (and some of the most first people who I saw on my Twitter Feed, so sorry if you didn’t get in this article to destroy me!) You can play the game here: http://dw.sipo.jp/

[DotWar]

P.S. If you have Twitter, you should join in on this (simple) contest, found in this post on Amidakuji!

Related posts:

1. How Wacom Japan Gets You To Buy Their Very Expensive Tablets (Cute Mesmerization)
2. Amidakuji: How To Make Your Decisions Random, Japanese-Style

P.S. Stick around to the end of this post, where you can win a sexy green USB man.

I bet a lot of you know all about “rock, paper, scissors,” the other way that Japanese people make decisions, but did you know about amidakuji? When you need to assign people or things to an equal number of outcomes, amidakuji is the best way to do it… plus, it kind of reminds me of all those pipes mario smokes has to walk through.

If you look at the info-graphic above (from Wikipedia), you probably should be able to understand how it works. The important thing is that there are an equal number of outcomes as there are things to make decisions on. If you do this, then everything works out in the end, every time (i.e. no one outcome will be chosen twice!).

Amidakuji is used for all kinds of things. I’ve experienced it with distributing prizes (this is how I think Christmas exchanges should happen), distributing chores to do (who has to clean the bathroom this week?), and choosing partners / opponents in various games and activities. It’s actually incredibly useful if you use it in the right situations.

Speaking of using it in the right situation, remember that Flutterscape contest from a few weeks ago? I used amidakuji to figure out which of the six finalists would win the prize. Congrats to the winners!

For those of you who didn’t win don’t cry for too long, because Flutterscape giveaway two out of three is upon us, and I’m giving away two “Midori Otoko.” These “green guys” are actually 2GB USB sticks. When you pop off their heads, you can access their USB dongle, plug it in, and make use of their binary knowledge. They also bend around, which means you can make them do Yoga, apparently.

Midori Otoko Rules

1. Make sure you have a Twitter account (and follow @tofugu and @flutterscape if you haven’t already!)
2. Write an awesome haiku about Flutterscape on Twitter (don’t know what Flutterscape does?). Haikus are 5-7-5 syllables.
3. Make sure you include the #flutterscape AND #haiku hashtags. If you don’t, I won’t be able to find your tweet, because I’m going to use this search on Twitter.
4. Optional: Post your haiku in the comments of this post, too, because we all want to read it.

I’m going to choose the winner sometime soon (Maybe a week? Maybe two?) so get your tweets up there. You can tweet multiple times, but just be careful not to tweet too much, otherwise your overwhelming number of tweets may take away from the punch of your winning tweet. I’ll pick two of my favorites and then send you a direct message if you won (so you should make sure to follow @tofugu on Twitter!)

[Midori Otoko on Flutterscape]

P.S. Stay inspired to study Japanese with the (free) TextFugu Inspirational E-mail List.

Related posts:

1. Two (or Three) More Days To Win These Flashcards
2. 8 Ways to Win Unlimited Japanese Lessons (and counting)
3. How To Buy Anything From Japan With FlutterScape [+Giveaway]

Click the image above to get a closer view

Mmmm, fukubukuro. One of my favorite things about New Years in Japan. The idea behind fukubukuro is simple yet enticing. Stores put stuff in bags, put a price on it, and don’t tell you what’s in there. All you know is that you’re getting an awesome deal even though you may not get quite what you want. Sometimes you get more than you bargained for, sometimes you don’t. That’s why fukubukuro is fun.

I know it isn’t New Years right now, but as you know I’m moving in order to make Tofugu my full time job. I’ve also decided to simplify my life. I don’t want all this stuff anymore. I was going to sell it on Craigslist, but thought of something a little more exciting (in my mind, anyways). That’s why I’ll be selling Tofukubukuro, while supplies last, which are small (or large) boxes of my stuff. You don’t know what you’re going to get (click through to get more information on what you’ll probably get), everything’s the same price, and it’s a fun little gamble. Plus, the money is going someplace pretty good, I think, and you could get some neat things out of it.

I have 4 large boxes and 15 small boxes. Let me break it down for you:

Small Box ($25): These boxes are pretty small. In general, they’ll have a DVD or Japanese manga, often times both. Almost every box also includes a Japanese keychain, and a thank you card for your purchase. There are also a good number with other random “extras” included, but I’ll let that part be a surprise. There are only 15 of these available, so be quick! [BUY A SMALL BOX]

Large Box ($100): There are a lot of things that are too big for a small box. Those things go in a big box. Big boxes have manga, DVDs, t-shirts, books, Japanese art books, neat Japanese nick-nacks, multiple Japanese key chains, possibly a (good) PS3 or PS2 game, and who knows what else. I like these ones because they’re bigger and can fit bigger things! If you want awesome, big box is the way to go. Definitely more than 4x the value of the small box. There are only four of these available! [SOLD OUT]

I may have more put together over the next week, but it won’t be that many more, so if you want one, you’ll have to get one quickly.

Q&A

Q. Will you ship internationally?

Yep, but it costs more.

Q. What will I get in my Tofukubukuro?

Who knows!? You can get a general idea by looking at the “large box / small box” section, above.

Q. How long will it take to get to me?

That depends on where you live. I am also moving at the moment, so there will be times where I’m spending the day driving. I will send your package out as soon as possible, though, usually within a few days.

Q. What will you use the money for?

Moving costs, for one. It’s expensive. Anything extra will probably be spent on a new video camera. It’s about time Tofugu made more videos and made them a bit better. It’s about time to make the HD upgrade, I think. Basically, it will all go back towards Tofugu / TextFugu in one way or another.

Q. What’s the value of the items in each box?

The small boxes obviously have less stuff (and are cheaper), and the big boxes have more. Bigger boxes tend to have more valuable items, too, but don’t shortchange the small ones! I definitely made an effort to put a good amount of value in each box, though because the contents are a surprise, it’s hard to know what you’ll get!

Q. What If I don’t like the stuff I get?

Sorry, can’t help you, but I hope you do like it!

Q. Are there any items not safe for kids?

Maybe. There are some rated R movies, though I think that’s the extent of it. If you’re a parent looking to get this for your kid, just be warned that I have no idea what box I’m going to send you, because everything’s already packaged up and ready to go. Sorry! Nothing you can get from here gets worse than a rated R movie, though. I won’t be sending anyone my ear, or anything.

Q. How much is shipping and handling?

For domestic U.S. buyers, it is $5 for a small one and $20 for a big one. International is $15 for a small one and $55 for a big one. Sorry, international!

Q. Is the stuff new? Used?

A little bit of both, actually. Every box has at least one new thing, that’s never been used. The point, however, is to sell my old stuff that I don’t want anymore, so there’s going to be some used stuff. I do try to take really good care of everything, though, and all the not-so-great used stuff is already at Goodwill. The Tofukubukuro only contains the cream of the (used) crop.

Q. How long will you be selling these for?

I don’t have that many, so it’s first come first serve. Once these are all gone, that’s (probably) it, for now. I have to move soon, so I want to get this done as quickly as possible too (I’m selling this stuff so I don’t have to take it with me, after all!).

Q. What size is the clothes?

Mostly all medium, though the funny purple sweater on the right is a girls small, I think.

Q. Why in the world would I want to buy a Tofukubukuro??!

Probably for the thrill of getting something random and fun, I imagine. That’s why I’d do it, anyways. You never know what you’ll end up getting!

Buy A Tofukubukuro Now!

Small Box ($25) – - – - – Large Box (SOLD OUT)

Thank you all for your continued support, and I hope you enjoy this more than I enjoy packing and sending things! I’m looking forward to getting this whole moving thing done and setting up a sexy Tofugu/TextFugu office for myself! Perhaps a fish tank with Fugu is in order (I’m guessing there’s something illegal about that, though?).

Related posts:

1. 12 Completely (Un)inspiring Images To Help You Learn Kanji
2. Tofugu Is Becoming A “Full-Time Job”… In Two Weeks

Because it’s a Saturday, and because I just know you need the inspiration, I’ve put together twelve images that will surely inspire you to jump on the kanji train. Choo choo. Kanji train coming in for a landing (yeah, the kanji train flies). Using the absolutely awesome online voluntary sweatshop-wage labor tool Mechanical Turk, I’ve been able to procure some inspiration for you. What I did was simple: I put a job up, asking people to write something that was both inspirational and kanji-related, and then take a picture of themselves. Of course, that got all sorts of interesting, and very uninspiring results, but at the very least it should give you a case of the chuckles.

This guy obviously hearts kanji. You can tell by the way he’s smiling so… wait a second…

Yes! Yes! Yes! What else is there to say about this one? Oh man.

What a frickin’ sweet beard this guy has. If that beard isn’t inspiring, I don’t know what is.

Yes you can.

This dude is reading dictionaries for fun on a Friday night. Sweet!

This person totally went all out.

It’s funny because… well, just read it.

Props for the haiku. Unprops for the talking about Papt. Not cool man, not cool.

Nice face, miss!

This isn’t ChatRoulette, is it?

Do his thumbs up makes you inspired?

This guy believes in you. His stare says “I believe in you… and I may murder you in your sleep if you don’t study.”

So, if clown-wig guy, hard for kanji guy, or devil mask man didn’t totally inspire you to dive head first into kanji study now, I don’t know what will. Then again, maybe it isn’t only about inspiration? Maybe part of it is working hard and motivating yourself? Nah. It’s definitely clowns that got me to learn kanji. Happy Saturday, everyone.

Oh Mechanical Turk, I love you.

P.S. If you need some proper inspiration, you should subscribe to Tofugu’s newsletter.

P.P.S. If you can’t handle all the inspiration already, you should follow Tofugu on Twitter.

Related posts:

1. Question: How Should You Learn Kanji?
2. The Types Of Kanji In Japanese: On’Yomi vs. Kun’Yomi
3. The History Of Kanji

If you’ve been reading Tofugu for a while, you’ll know that I can’t pass up a good Godzilla story, especially one that contains haikus as well. GodzillaHaiku is a Tumbler Blog that simply contains images from Godzilla films and overlays them with haikus. Kind of feels like a cross between LOLcats and UnhappyHipster, but a lot more radioactive, if you catch my drift.

Of course, there are a good number more of these over at GodzillaHaiku, so if you’re intrigued, be sure to go and check them out. Here’s to hoping TOho doesn’t send them a cease and desist, like they did with my 1st person Godzilla blog a while back. Also, thanks as always to my favorite Godzilla expert Joyce (literally a Godzilla expert, no joke!) for the tip!

P.S. If your radioactive heart was touched by these haiku, you should follow me on Twitter.

Related posts:

1. Japanese Snow Monkeys Warm Your Heart With Hot Springs
2. Ultraman, Godzilla Wedding

Everyone knows that smoking is pretty unhealthy – even in Japan people are smoking less and less. But for me, when it comes to my debilitating addiction to cool gadgets, I’d be happy to carry highly radioactive cell phones, stare at staring women, or put one of these in my mouth. That is, as long as it’s only a Vitamin C cartridge inside.

I found this product via Flutterstream’s Twitter feed (Yes, you can buy this). The one being sold is the “Vitamin C” one, though it exists in “Coenzyme Q10″ and “Tarless Nicotine” (for you cigarette addicts out there) flavors as well. Mmm, I can finally throw out the Airborne.

Here’s how it essentially works:

• There’s an LED light so that you can look just as cool as other smokers around you (who’s second hand smoke is much worse for you than if you were smoking an actual cigarette).
• You breath in moisture from the air which gets turned into a smoke-like mist which you can breath out (presumably so you can continue to look as cool as all the other smokers you’re sitting outside with).
• Inside is a replaceable cartridge (the three types that were listed above).
• It doesn’t smell like anything, which means you can smoke indoors and have fun explaining to every other person you run into that “no, it’s not an actual cigarette, it’s just mist… no, see, it’s not a… no… right, but I’m telling you… right… it’s mechanical… and it… ugh, fine, I’ll put it out. See? Switch. Not fire. I just turn off a switch.”)

You do have to charge your fancy cigarette, which apparently takes 3-4 hours to do. C’mon, if they wanted to make it like a real cigarette (which it seems like they’re really trying to do with the LED light and the mist and stuff), then they should make it charge faster, so you can take a break every hour and take advantage of the extra breaks you should get (and deserve). Right?

And, while you’re at it, hanging out with the rest of the smokers, why not take a look at this company’s other product, “NoseMint”?

It’s just one home run after another for this company, isn’t it? So are you like me? Does smoking sound awesome if you get to use a fancy gadget to do it?

P.S. If you think your nose could smell better, you should follow me on Twitter.

No related posts.

A lot of you out there know how much of a (sad) Apple fanboy I am, which means you’ll probably understand why iPhone art makes my heartbeat increase. This is the post I was going to post the other day (before getting distracted by Wacom Japan’s little flash game), and yes, it’s also developed by my new favorite art / design / tech group Team-Lab. We’ve already seen how nice and shiny LCD screens can modernize hanging scrolls, but what if you want to take your hanging scrolls on the train? First, you’d have to get four iPhones, but if you’re a multi-millionaire, then why not?

The trick with these hanging scroll iPhones is to put them side by side and synchronize the start time of each. When this is done, the hanging scrolls tell a story (not unlike regular hanging scrolls), using traditional art styles via a new medium. Personally, I love the 3D-but-not-3D style that Team-Lab puts into a lot of their design, and the iPhone’s a great touch too.

Of course, now that this has come out, there are rumors of a slightly homelier Android version hitting the market too. This new Android mobile hanging scroll model will drop fewer calls and run on Verizon, which encourages you to purchase the family plan with unlimited scroll-viewing minutes for only $49.99 a month.

Oh, and you should follow Tofugu on Twitter.

Related posts:

1. Flower and Corpse: Making Hanging Scrolls Modern
2. How Wacom Japan Gets You To Buy Their Very Expensive Tablets (Cute Mesmerization)

Welcome to another edition of “Saturday Time Waster.” There seems to be a huge difference between American flash games and Japanese flash games. Although this isn’t 100% the case, it seems like most of the time, Japanese flash games are all about making you feel nice and calm. Most of the games seem to have no end, and they attempt to down you with pleasant music and cuteness. I suppose if I was a hard working “Sarari man” I’d want something to calm me down too while I was hiding out in my cubical playing flash games.

This particular game was made by my friends at Team-Lab (they’re the ones that did the fantastically mesmerizing ”Flower and Corpse“), who I’ll be slowly covering over the course of the month. I was originally going to put something up for all you Apple lovers today (which I suppose will have to wait), when I came across this game that Team-Lab made with Wacom (the folks that make those really cool, yet expensive tablets). As you’re playing this game, it definitely makes the tablet yearner in all of us think “man, I wish I had $500-$1000 to buy a tablet to play this game with.” Add that to the zombie / mesmerized feeling you get while playing the game… and you’ve created the perfect monster… er… customer.

You can play the game yourself, or watch the video showing my attempt to win the game. I’m pretty sure if you fill the screen with angry neon pigs that counts as a win, right? At least I didn’t buy a tablet… yet.

Play now: http://tablet.wacom.co.jp/bambooplayroom/

Oh, and you should follow Tofugu on Twitter.

Related posts:

1. 100 Ways to Entertain Guests Visiting From Japan
2. Flower and Corpse: Making Hanging Scrolls Modern