tokyo gadget fest

The other day, Casio sponsored an event in Shibuya. Digital gadget events are usually done in Akihabara, but Casio wanted to try to appeal to a younger crowd, so we did the event in Shibuya.

Casio announced their new QV-30 digital camera that day so we showed the young people in Shibuya the new camera and a printer that connects to the camera. There is a machine called a Print Club kiosk that a company called Atlas released this year. People go to these kiosks and get their pictures taken. The machine prints little stickers of these pictures. Kids take these pictures and stick them on all kinds of things. The pictures are usually pictures taken with friends. Anyway, the new Casio printer lets you make these stickers yourself. At the event, we let kids take pictures and print stickers for free.

I recently got one of these printers. Now I have a complete collection along with a QV10, QV10A, QV30, QV100, QV300. I lent a QV300 to Joi Ito so he can take high quality images for electric minds.

That day, I also got a baby-G, the mini version of the G-Shock Wristwatch that James Higa was asking about in Conversations.

The G-Shock and now the baby-G are a huge hit in Japan. The day of the event, Casio released their Christmas baby-G pair of watches and they sold out that day.

G-Shock and baby-G are diving watches. A lot of surfers use them. They are coming out in all kinds of styles and colors. Unlike the Swatch, the G-Shock is less "fashiony" and more "sporty." They are more robust than the Swatch. The G-Shock watches are LCD and have animations. Some of them let you program words that play across the screens. The pair of watches that came out this Christmas for instance, were paired up like Angel and Devil. The Angel being a white watch and the Devil being black. Each had LCD animations of the Angel or Devil.

There were also polar bear and penguin pairs... You get the idea. I got a rare pink baby-G programmed to display CHIBAREI in spinning letter. Cooler than a Java script. ;)

higa said:

From one side of the coin, the education here is too restrictive, repetitive, and rote. But... you do actually learn the basics, you learn more group skills, and the education is uniform throughout the country. I also think the 'must get into Todai' pressure is starting to break down and students are pursuing more diverse futures than the one path of old. I'll be faced with the decision of whether to send my son to international school or Japanese school much sooner than I'd like. I'm not sure which way I lean. I like the rigor of Japanese school but also want Jasper to enjoy the freedom of US schools.

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