The fashionable face mask

Once you start to realize that most of the mask-wearers may actually be the healthy ones and the guy coughing in the corner without the mask is more likely to give you the flu, you get chance to study the different types of masks. I thought I had seen a lot of them, but it was only when I picked up the latest copy of DIME that I realized just how many types there were.

DIME Magazine, March 3, 2009 Issue

1. Masks focused on ones image
2. Masks focused on functionality
3. Professional masks

The following is a snapshot of the article from DIME giving an overview. For more detail (in Japanese) you can take a look at DIME 05, 2009 3 3 edition.

The fashionable masks
In the first category, the comment is

even when wearing a mask one wants to look fashionable.

Well, nice try, but the mask on the face as a fashion statement might be a tough sell. Still, lets have a look at why they are considered fashionable. As the mask designs have developed, the manufacturers focusing on the fashionable category have worked on given more of a 3D or raised mask shape to the mask. This makes it look less like someone has strapped a packet of tissues across your nose with elastic bands.

Also in the fashionable category are the masks that don’t smear your makeup and allow you to wash off your makeup easily from the mask if it gets dirty. As well there are masks which are said to be kinder to delicate skin and masks that allow you to leave them on for longer periods of time without causing crease lines on your face.

Review by DIME magazine on face masks, Japan

Focus on Functionality Masks
As well as helping to protect you from the spread of flu, colds and hayfever, these masks also take into account features such as protecting you from dryness of air, fresh aromatic oils and menthol sheets in the masks to entice you to buy them. When I was looking at the people wearing masks at Shibuya station I really had not thought about which one might be wearing the menthol mask and which one had the “keep my skin from getting dry” mask on!

Some of the masks come with refills for the aromatic oils and menthol strips. Others in this category specifically point out that they combat influenza virus etc, whilst some focus on areas such as, making sure your glasses don’t steam up when you wear the mask. With the stakes high everyone has to find their niche.

Professional Focus Masks
This category should definitely not be worn on the train. They start to resemble something you might see in a movie where the body count is climbing. The mouth/nose area tends to have a plastic breathing filter and definitely does not look friendly. Compared to this category, the fashionable masks look very trendy.

Functional and Professional Masks

Designer Masks, Original for you
One make of masks did look more fashionable than the rest. It was billed as a “Mask with decoration”. It allows you to put on a design seal and rhinestone to make the mask an original for you. The main purpose of the mask appears to be protection from hayfever. The Japanese name for this mask is “DecoriMask”.

Also in this picture, on the left, you can see the product called Nose Mask Pit sold by Bio International. This is a filter inserted into the nose. The copy says

When you get used to the strange sensation you feel in the beginning, you really don’t mind it so much.

I don’t think this one is for me!

DecoriMask and Nose Mask

Next time you are out, check out the masks at the station and see if you can figure out who is wearing what.

The English language site is easy to follow and has a good fresh feel about it.
http://www.kajitaku.com/english/

I have not tried out any services yet, but picked up a catalog at the station. If you are looking for a company to help you out this may be a good place to look.

Poster for Rainbow Bridge Walk 2009

building excitement for the sports movement aiming to bring the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games to Tokyo.

The official website can be found here at http://www.tokyorainbow-walk.com/ (Japanese only).

The starting time for the 7km course event is set for 8:50am. It is expected that about 5,000 people will join in the bridge walk with traffic being closed off from the bridge.

The bridge is not normally closed to traffic but there is access for pedestrians to walk alongside the cars on normal days. I have tried it and it is quite interesting with a small innovation museum in the middle section providing a welcome break for walkers. The walk access is on the lower deck of the bridge and the view is slightly stifled. This bridge walk event is different though in that you can actually walk on the top road section of the bridge and get a full view of Tokyo.

Here are the start times in detail:
平成21 年3 月1 日（日） (event on March 1, 2009)
午前7 時30 分 ～集合 (assemble from 7:30am)
午前8 時30 分 開会式 (opening ceremony at 8:30am)
午前8 時50 分 スタート (walk starts at 8:50am, expected to finish at 12:30)

Here is a map of the walking course. Note that the start point is on the Odaiba side of the bridge in the Odaiba Kaihin Koen.

Here are some great photos of the bridge from flickr:
http://flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=rainbow+bridge+tokyo&m=text

There are many varieties of potato chips to choose from in Japan and the Yuzu variety may not last long in the convenience store where new products tend to change out very quickly.

Convenience Stores becoming Market Research Stores
Convenience stores appear to be becoming a market research store rather than their original purpose of serving the basic foods conveniently. Every time I visit my local convenience store I see new products only to go back in the following week to see them gone.

Japanese Snack Reviews Blog
Back to the Yuzu story, the end result was the Yuzu potato chips were good. I was going to write more about this topic but found a great article at Japanese Snack Reviews which I thought summed up the whole experience.

If you like Yuzu, these chips are for you, although the convenience store may have already filled their spot with the next new product.

I also bought some Chocolate coated Sunflower seeds which I had not seen in Japan before. I don’t know a lot about these but they did taste good.

Article from Trendy - March 2009

In the latest edition of Trendy Magazine, an article to help with this discusses how a Professor at Tokyo University (Prof. Aizawa) has developed a software program that can automatically analyzes the food you are about to eat by taking a photograph of it and checking it against the basic food groups. The application can be used from a mobile phone allowing you instant feedback.

The application can also keep a log of the food and save it in a diary for you to check your week or monthly balance. It is expected to be available this month, February 2009.

Professor Kiyoharu Aizawa conducts his research out of the Aizawa Laboratory at Tokyo University.

In Aizawa laboratory, we are working mainly on image and video processing technologies for the next-generation information society.

Here is the link to their home page.

A towel made to look like a chocolate roll for Valentines Day

It looks like a Chocolate roll and has the name ミニロール　バター Mini butter roll taste, but if you look closely you will see it is actually a rolled up towel!

I am a chocolate fan so i would be very disappointed to receive a towel for Valentines Day, but I am sure there are some people who might prefer the towel.

This year many guys are supposedly giving the girls chocolates for Valentines Day in what is becoming known as gyaku choco or reverse chocolate.
Here is my post discussing that.

Here is a very good look at what women are thinking in Japan around this Valentine Day period from WhatJapanThinks.com
http://whatjapanthinks.com/2009/02/06/what-to-expect-this-valentines-day-in-japan/

The store is locate in Ichiban-gai (First Avenue) of the Station underground mall on level B1.　Here is the link for the official site of 東京駅一番街(First Avenue at Tokyo Station). The site appears to be in Japanese only.

C-Scout have a Rilakkuma article about purikura for office ladies here if you are interested and another article about Rilakkuma themed hotel rooms!

Perfect location for Japan Tobacco to sponsor. Everyone already has the product out advertising it for them.

5 year lease contract

The Council is looking to set a lease period of 5 years for the naming rights and expect to commence the operation from April this year, 2009. The company that bids and wins the rights to individual locations will have the right to display their company name and product names or billboard type advertising at the locations. They will also be able to use land in another 7 locations for billboards.

Whilst money is a consideration in awarding the rights, the Shibuya Council will also review the bidders plan for keeping the facilities clean and tidy. Many of the facilities are old and so the Council hope they might get improvements made also through this campaign.

Sources: Asahi Newspaper (Japanese edition), yahoo.co.jp, Shibuya Keizai Shinbun, Shibuya Council documentation.

Number 3 on the official list of Shibuya toilets in need of sponsorship

Application Details
The bids were able to be submitted from last month, January 30th and will close this month on the 13th February. If you are interested in bidding you can contact the Park department of Shibuya Council on 03-3463-2876.

Here is a link to the application form for the toilet naming rights:
http://www.city.shibuya.tokyo.jp/news/oshirase/koshu.html
http://www.city.shibuya.tokyo.jp/news/oshirase/pdf/koshu.pdf – Has list of 14 locations on it.

Possible International Marketing Appeal – Novelty Marketing
Many of the toilet locations are in very well known places and have a large population of people who congregate around them either waiting for others or just finding somewhere to smoke.

The locations will be valuable in advertising products to local consumers.

Also, the idea of a company or organisation sponsoring a toilet sounds quite newsworthy and it may actually attract an international and diverse audience to the company’s products and services.

Official List
Here is the official list of toilets available for sponsorship:

Japan Tobacco, JapanSoc.org ?
Whilst JT, Japan Tobacco, is obviously a prime candidate for sponsoring locations it may be interesting if a foreign firm was to make a bid to sponsor a toilet. On a totally unrelated topic, JapanSoc.org have recently formed an organisation to help develop and promote the blogs of those who are writing about Japan. One of the aims is to increase the amount of media exposure given to blogs on Japan and Japan related articles. All those interested are welcome to join for free. No experience needed, plenty of assistance and support available.

Not wanting to get the wrong type of exposure, being around the toilets, but it may be worthwhile for JapanSoc.org to consider putting in a bid for one of the toilets in Shibuya. It would certainly get some international attention. Maybe the toilet could go hi-tech and have a digital tv screen hooked up to the internet showing the blogs of JapanSoc.org members.

Shibuya Yokocho toilets – Ahead of their time

I took a picture a while ago of a rather strange toilet which is close to Shibuya station. This is actually not a public toilet, but a private toilet for patrons of Shibuya Yokocho Nonbei. They could be seen as the forerunner to advertising in combination with the toilet. At night the neon light appears above the toilet to direct people to the restaurants. Very convenient!

Sharp Plasmacluster logo

Original Post
The original post I did can be found here at shibuya246.com

According to the pamphlet, Plasmacluster technology emits positive and negative ions into the air, and thereby deactivates impurities. They are designed to combat dust, allergens, pollen and other air borne particles such as tobacco smoke, cold viruses etc.

My experience
I bought the machine because hearing that influenza was going to be widespread this year, I really wanted to make sure I did not catch it and so far I have not had a cold. I have used the machine non-stop since I bought it and found it easy to use, fairly quiet and of great value.

The machine I bought covers about a 6-8 tatami mat area. Outside of Japan I am not sure what size that translates to, but it is an average size Japanese room and probably an average size western hotel room. The space of 1 tatami mat was meant to be the space required for one person to sleep lying down. Without digressing too much here is a link to Wikipedia talking about Tatami

Sharp installing units in own offices
Recently Sharp announced that they would be installing 10,000 of their industrial plasmacluster machines in their Sharp offices and factories.
http://sharp-world.com/corporate/g_topix/pci_place/index.html
http://sharp-world.com/corporate/news/090119.html

The above articles discuss the larger industrial units where Sharp says:

Plasmacluster Ion generators use Sharp’s proprietary Plasmacluster Ion technology to decompose and deactivate harmful airborne substances such as mold fungus, viruses, and allergens. These generators are designed to thoroughly deactivate harmful airborne substances in large areas, such as offices and conference rooms.

Although the technology for the smaller units is the same, just they dont cover as large an area.

Technology Explanation
Here is an easy to understand article about the technology with some pictures to aid the explanation:
http://www.theairpurifiers.com/sharp_plasmacluster_ion.html

Sharp announce Bird Flu tests
In a conference focussed on plasma cluster technology,the ability to handle “bird flu” was discussed.

http://sharp-world.com/corporate/g_topix/pci2/index.html

http://sharp-world.com/corporate/news/080827.html
http://sharp-world.com/corporate/g_topix/pci/index.html

IG-A100 Plasmacluster

and some other links to check
http://www.blogcatalog.com/topic/plasmacluster/

Follow up
If anyone has any specific questions that you want to leave as a comment, I will try and get the answers and follow up.

The view looking up Koen-dori. Surprisingly not many people out today.

Docomo building at bottom of Koen-dori with Horikita Maki on her docomo phone.

Walking further up Koen-dori I went past the usual suspects of stores:

Seibu department store - koen dori

Gap - Koen dori

Parco department store - Koen dori

and then had a look back down the street from half-way:

Looking back down Koen-dori from Paro department store

took in some of the lesser known interesting places:

Three Minutes Happiness - Amusement Variety Store, Koen dori

Tokyo Wonder Site cafe - Koen dori

Coffe & Donut, Koen dori

before getting to the top of Koen dori where the Shibuya kuyakusho and NHK is located

Shibuya kuyakusho - top of Koen dori

Clock in front of Shibuya kuyakusho

NHK building - top of Koen dori

Looking back down Koen dori from top

On the way back down I bumped into the Tobacco & Salt Museum

Tobacco & Salt Museum, Koen dori

As well as all the stores there are plenty of other sites to see on Koen dori such as the English style telephone boxes:

and I came across these flowers that are displayed by the Koen dori society which can be found at www.koen-dori.com. The website is in Japanese only, but it has a really good look and feel to it, explaining all about the stores, brands, news etc. For a community website it is quite impressive. I guess the department stores must have chipped in quite a bit to get this working.

They also have a live webcams set up and the location of these is shown on the website.

For English readers, Korean and Chinese versions available also, they have a pdf document that shows all the stores. This can be seen and downloaded from http://www.koen-dori.com/guidebook/ although the file is 2.7MB

There really was not a lot of people out today, maybe because it had turned cold recently, but it was nice to get out and see Koen dori without being caught up in the masses.

Parco department store - Koen dori

Photos
I have posted all of these photos and more at shibuya246.smugmug for those that want to see them
http://shibuya246.smugmug.com/gallery/7244321_2Ck2o

Leaving that aside, LABI, Yamada Denki’s large scale electronic stores have a new idea based on the old theme of member point cards. They have installed machines at their store so that when you visit the store you can swipe your card and get an automatic 10 points credited to your account. If you buy something you get further points depending on how much you spend, AND then before you leave the store you can swipe your card again for another 10 points. They also have a slot machine style game playing when you swipe your card for the chance to win more points.

10 free points might not be much, but if you live close by and can visit everyday you could rack up 3,650 points in a year. If everyone started doing that I am sure LABI would have trouble honoring the points earned.

It is nice to see a promotion that doesn’t require you to spend money first. Whoever said “there is no such thing as a free lunch” obviously hadn’t visited LABI.

Yamada Denki point machines in LABI store

Here is a link to a map on how to get to Shibuya LABI
http://gmap.jp/shop-14335.html

Billboard for Chocolate Underground

Since Jan 16 the ads have been up in Shibuya promoting the animation movie which is an adaptation from the novel “Bootleg” by Alex Shearer, a British author. On the right is an advert showing at Shibuya crossing.

Story
“The story centers on two 13-year-old boys who live in a country that has banned chocolate and mandated fruits and vegetables for daily consumption. The boys discover a stash of cocoa and sugar and decide to run a bootleg chocolate factory, in complete defiance of the government run by the oppressive Good for You Party. Their misadventures eventually sparks a revolution in the country. The theatrical version will add 20 minutes of new footage and present the entire project in widescreen format. ” - Source: ANN

Preview
Yahoo Japan has a preview at:
http://streaming.yahoo.co.jp/p/t/00098/v04623/
The official site trailer is here:
http://www.choco-bar.jp/trailer/index.html

Alex Shearer in Japan
According to the official website for the production at http://www.choco-bar.jp/index/index.html Alex Shearer will be coming to Japan and giving an introduction on the first day of screening followed by a talkshow the next day. The dates are:

31st Jan at Shibuya Theatre – Tsutaya, movie starts at 10am, introduction for Alex Shearer at 11:30am following screening and then a second introduction at 12:25 followed by the second screening of the movie for that day.

1st Feb a talkshow between Alex Shearer and the translator Kanehara will be held from 6:30pm.

It looks like you may need to get reservation tickets if you want to attend the talkshow.

Photos
Here are some photoclips from the official site:
To see more go to http://www.choco-bar.jp/story/index.html