-Looking for what's kawaii? Interested in kawaii, cute fashion + goods from Japan, Japanese cuisine or language? Come look find kawaii shopping and what's more in Tokyo- Tokyo Kawaii, etc. Shop cute cool products or stuff and fashion clothing from Japan. Shop Japanese cute products, cute stuff and cute things. Find out this cute blog or cute website about Japanese pop culture. It's a blog from Japan, Japan blog in English by a Japanese girl.

The video introduces what kind of toys are hot now inside and outside Japan!

Suffering from decreasing numbers of children, Japanese toy makers nowadays have to change target from kids to adult customers and foreign customers.

“Taikenou” (*caution: It makes sounds.) (2499yen) is a toy that allows us to have simulated experience of crime lab. The kit is not even a dummy, it’s exactly the same one that the examiners actually are using. There are several kinds of kits such as blood test, pH measurement kit, as well as the fingerprint detection kit introduced in the video.

“I-SOBOT” (*caution: It makes sounds after you choose your language.) is an expensive high tech robot (32,190yen) that is designed for adult customers to play with.

4D dissection puzzle and crystal puzzle are also popular. Above all, Choro-Q hybrid is overwhelmingly popular today. It recorded a huge hit with 200,000 sales from release.

Tamiya is the most famous plamodel toy company in Japan. There is a mini circuit on the 2nd floor of Tamiya plamodel factory in Shimbashi, Tokyo where salaried male workers drop by to play with their mini 4WD cars before they go back home. Most of them are the generation who played with mini 4WD car toys when they were kids. There are over 150 kinds of parts for modification to customize “my car”.

Foreigners also like Japanese toys, too. “Made-in-Japan” is regarded as a good brand in the U.S toy industry. Above all, Bakugan is bestselling in New York. Bayblade is so hot in Korea. They like to hold Bayblade tournaments from time to time.

Do you like Japanese toys?
I liked to play with Decotti from Takara Tomy. Same as kawaii, I don’t think it’s childish or silly for adults to play with toys like these. With kids, adults can enjoy more with these toys.

Unique Sample Cafe

LCAFE reopened December 2009 at Shibuya PARCO part1 B1 floor. If you ever have a chance to visit the cafe, never fail to register for the membership from your moble phone in advance. According to what you order to eat or drink at the cafe space, you can get tokens(Lcoins) to be echanged for novelties or small sample products.

For example, 1 Lcoin can be exchanged for either of the Bihada Ichizoku’s foot mask or the hand mask. Even a cat food can be exchanged for 1 Lcoin.
You can get 3 Lcoins per lunch. If you take lunch 10 times at this cafe, you can get 30 Lcoins and that can be exchanged for a watch that is originally priced 15800yen. (USD158)

Unique Student Nail Salon

Students from a nail school need practice, while there are people who are happy with nail decorations at discounted price. That’s what this new type of nail salon is for. That’s where students from the nail school do nails for discounted prices and the customers receive not-bad level of finish or decoration (although not perfect) by paying less.

Having said that, the student nailists at the salon are all those who have passed the exams of the nail school. When a professional nail salon requires 8925yen for the course introduced on TV for example, this student nail salon does 4700yen only. When finished, the student nailist gets advice from the professional. It’s good they can still get compensation from such experimental salon.

***Please ignore the last part of the video that has nothing to do with the salon.

Kirin’s opinion:
I’m quite interested in such new type of stores of new concepts! There are variety of ways of thinking and value that we have, and so the businesses should not stick to the ordinal ways. Collaborations made by more than 2 different industries or services sometimes can result in win-win outcome. XD

I’d like to share with you some nice video tutorials of making kawaii hair updos! If you enjoy long hair, you can try several styles introduced in her videos. It looks like some videos have English subtitles. She also shares information about beauty and cosmetics in her blog in Japanese. I wish I had such a long hair to try even one of them, but…you know it’ll take me many years to grow my hair long enough to enjoy these styles. (>_<)Ow!

Maybe you have seen this before, as one of her videos (below) was awarded the best “how-to sector” of Youtube Video Award Japan 2009. *applause*

How did you like it? Pretty? Too complicated?

Bonus cute video! This is so sweet!!

Do you know any other good online shops you may want to share with other readers of this blog?

I’m not a big fan of manga or comic book, but I’ve wondered for a long time why there’s no library for it. Actually there are some public libraries that have small collection of manga, but variety is very limited to educational themes. Manga cafe is another option, but I don’t like its atmosphere: Each private room is so small it can even make us claustrophobia after all. That’s the standard manga cafe in Japan.

It’s interesting however that Meiji University is planning to open a manga library in 2014. In 2008, the university opened a new department, “Global Japanese Studies” where students study manga culture. The other day “Yoshihiro Yonezawa’s memorial library of manga and subcultures” is just opened. Yoshihiro Yonezawa, alumnus of Meiji University, is one of the top reviewers of manga and is well-known as someone who established Comiket, or comic market. He has collected all these manga (140,000 books) by himself alone!! The video below introduces it.

The player will show in this paragraph

“Manga has occupied over 50% of publications sold in Japan. Thus, it has influenced our lifestyles for a long time. This means that manga plays an important role on our history and social science. Besides, nowadays manga, as well as anime, catches the world’s attention.” says the associate professor of Meiji University.

How interesting! Manga is not just an amusement, it’s considered as a part of Japanese culture today! The president of Meiji University remarks in this page that it’s high time to preserve tons of collections of manga officially, since such attempt has never been implemented ever before because manga is considered just as a part of subculture.

BTW manga museum is already available in Kyoto for over 3 years by now. :p

According to this page, it looks like 1st floor is open for free, which is like an exhibition of manga as you watched in the above video. You must be over 18-year-old, either students or teachers of Meiji University or members of the library (6000 yen/annually, 2000 yen/monthly, 300 yen/daily) to be authorized to access the book shelves on the 2nd floor and book storeroom. You are however charged extra from prepaid card that you have to buy to borrow and read manga at the reading room. 100 points per book, and is equal to 100 yen. 10 books at maximum, but you are not allowed to bring them out of the library.

It is not my ideal way that reading is only allowed inside the premises, and moreover it’s charged besides admission. But I like their attempt and am curious how the entire library will be like in 2014. How would you like this?