Heart-shaped cucumbers up close

Heart-shaped cucumbers made news last summer, but I just recently found them in my local grocery story, a discovery which prompted a little more research into these strangely shaped salad staples.

As it turns out, they are grown by a co-op of nine women called Heartstick Ojaru in Chiba (a suburb of Tokyo) using plastic molds affixed to the stem of the plant, which create heart and star shapes visible when the cucumber is sliced cross-wise.

Compared to the square melons that made headlines a couple of years back, which were designed by vegetable growers to make melons easier to transport and stock, these creative cucumbers are representative of what appears to be a grass roots effort to make meal preparation a little bit more exciting for suburban housewives.

In addition to being more fun, they are also considerably cheaper. One cucumber runs only ¥105 (about 2-3 times the price of a normal one) and , as the product website demonstrates, the creative applications are endless.

Tokyo Trend Scouting covered in Forbrukerteknologi

CScout Japan CEO Sven Kilian was featured again recently in the Norwegian technology magazine Forbrukerteknologi. It looks like a great piece, but we’ll have to make a point of brushing up on our Norwegian for the future.

Also included in the article are references to the Sega Homestar Pro home planetarium and the Sony Rolly.

Tada Gets: QR code-only print magazine

Despite a publishing decline in Japan, it’s still quite easy to get a magazine for just about anything, and the publishing world has been hard at work integrating their printed materials with the new Digital World.

The print magazine Tada Gets, which basically means “things for free” is a magazine composed entirely of QR codes. By scanning the codes, users link via mobile phone to free ringtones, decorations, games, music, pictures, and other content.

Tada Gets is a novel approach (now in its 5th issue) and takes advantage of the fact that many young Japanese now have unlimited data plans on their phones and can scan/download away without fearing big charges. Of course, there is accompanying written content with the codes as to not hypnotize the readers and keep it fresh, but the majority of pages are simply covered with QR codes of all sizes and colors.

XZABADY waterproof iPod speaker from Twinbird

The home appliance gadgeteers at Twinbird have come up with an interesting approach to a one-size-fits-all solution to waterproofing your digital audio player: Shrinkwrap it.

Well, not entirely. The XZABADY is like a picture frame for your iPod, Zune, or whatever else is in your pocket. Connect the audio jack, and then compress the player between the customizable backing and a flexible silicone rubber sheet.

You now have easy access to buttons, jog dials, and other functions that you need without getting anything wet or soapy. The sound comes from stereo speakers with reflectors behind the unit, keeping them out of the splash zone as well. Even without your DAP, the built-in FM radio can keep you happy. The sales price is yet unknown.

Room Palette Skyrium from Banpresto Relaxstyle

Banpresto’s RelaxStyle series is updating its classic and highly popular Room Palette to make way for the colorful Room Palette Skyrium lamp. Available from April, the Skyrium incorporates nine color LED lights that move through a diffuser to create an evolving and colorful projection on walls and ceilings.

Projection modes for the Skyrium include Aurora (to recreate the Northern Lights), Resort Ocean (blues and greens), Deep Blue, and Dream mode (3-color). It can be powered by both an AC adapter and batteries, but there are also 60 and 120 minute timer settings to conserve power after you doze off.

The original 2003 Room Palette was one of the very first in the Japanese megatrend of affordable ambient lighting for the home, and made way for a whole host of products from HomeStar planetariums from Sega Toys to kaleidoscope projectors. These are all toys targeted specifically to adults, typically in the 20-30 age range, and the concept has been very successful.

Banpresto press release

Tokyo Art Beat - Diamond Designs

CScout Japan’s trend consultant Rebecca Milner has just posted her latest piece for Tokyo Art Beat on the Bunka Gakuen Costume Museum’s exhibition of contemporary diamond jewelry. Check out the article Diamond Designs here.

In a related Tokyo Art Beat vein, I’ll be at the new bilingual TAB Talks event tonight at Gotanda Sonic, featuring Japanese editor Yoshio Suzuki (Brutus, anan, and many more).

Pollen brush: New weapon for combatting hay fever

Face masks might help prevent you from inhaling allergy inducing pollen, but why not go right to the source and remove the offending dust from your immediate surroundings, starting with your clothes? This Pollen Absorbing Brush from H&C Co. does just that, by using a fan and a filter to suck the pollen off your clothes, with an impressive 99.9% rate of efficiency, while promising to treat even the most delicate fabrics kindly.

With over 40 kinds of allergy causing pollens in Japan, about 1 in 6 Japanese suffer from notable symptoms, making hay fever both a serious nuisance and a serious opportunity for successful product sales.

The brush costs ¥5,229, though a replacement pack of five filters goes for only ¥1,220.

No sugar beer from Kirin and Suntory

With the debut of Kirin’s Zero this week and Suntory’s Zero Nama (draft) scheduled for the first week of March, the diet beer market has reached a new competitive peak, just in time to shed some of that post-Valentine’s Day chocolate weight.

The “zero” in both names refers to zero sugar, which is big news for beer-guzzling would-be dieters. Both also come in close to nil in the calorie department, Kirin Zero with 67 calories for a standard 350ml can and Suntory Zero Nama with 81 calories. Though it should be noted that both of these are happoshus, and thus not technically beer.

Sapporo, meanwhile, has a 50% reduced calorie actual beer planned for release on February 27, which weighs in at 119 calories and 4.6g sugar. Sapporo already has a low calorie happoshu, Sapporo Slims, which has 74k calories and 1.4-3.15g sugar (no, we’re not sure why it varies).

Magazine Tokyo Walker gave readers a sneak peak at the new beers and rated them in terms of “refreshing-ness” and “bitterness,” with Suntory Zero Nama coming out on top with 4 (out of 5) stars for refreshing-ness and 3 for bitterness.

New Astrodea Celestial Watch from Citizen

We’ve talked about the Citizen Astrodea “Moon Age” and “Celestial” watch series many times, and it seems we’ll have to keep doing it forever since they update the watches yearly. For those unfamiliar with the line, these are very detailed watches that keep perfect “celestial time” as the face rotates in real time. You can perfectly tell the placement of the stars just by using the watch’s many measurements (which I will never understand completely).

This time, the Celestial watches are much slimmer in design with a lighter weight, and the addition of a yellow version as well. Below are the blue piece for the Southerm Hemisphere, and the yellow “whole sky” piece for the North.

Both versions are limited to 300 (blue) and 200 (yellow) pieces per year, which is less than previous models. All available Astrodea models, including the Moon Age and the 2007 “small” versions are available here.

DecoChoco customized chocolates from the net to your door

Chocolate maker Tirol may be expanding into drinks, but that doesn’t mean they’ve neglected expanding on their core business of tiny chocolates next to cash registers. This time they’ve mixed the classic schoolgirl hobby of purikura with their ubiquitous chocolates by allowing online customization and ordering with a simple interface provided by MacStyle.

The website DecoCho (Decoration Chocolate) allows users to upload up to three pictures, customize them in a digital purikura-esque fashion, and then have the results printed up on Tirol chocolate wrappers to be be delivered within 2-3 weeks.

The user-friendly interface makes creating the pictures a snap with drag-and-drop, and at about $20 for the entire process the chocolates are reasonably priced. Easy digital customization of items is a big emerging trend in Japan, starting with mobile phones and moving toward cars and even everyday objects.