There is a Japanese company called D-Barcode
which took on a mundane, boring, and unimaginative part of our consumer life and gave it a makeover: Barcodes. This is one of those ideas they are so simple, that it took a designer genius to come up with it. The result, I may say, is absolutely cool:
Beautiful Japanese Barcodes
If I had any kind of company that sold packaged products, I’d immediately steal this idea.
More Beautiful Japanese Barcodes
Nice, huh?
(Via Dark Roasted Blend.)
If you’re a spoiled Japanese brat your parents probably bought you the Gundam platinum figurine. But what might a cake at such a birthday party look like? Thanks to chef Nobue Ikara we now know:
This cake is decorated with US$130000 worth of platinum ornaments. Of course Ikara didn’t intend it as a birthday cake, but as a “celebration of women who have dazzled millions with their beauty”. What a way to suck up to some models.
But if you think $130k is already a lot of money, well, you don’t know the Japanese yet. There’s always room for more. In this case, the most expensive chocolate cake ever, which was exhibited for sale at a Takashimaya Co., Ltd department store in Tokyo earlier this year:
The chocolate cake was decorated with 223 diamonds, and was reported to be priced at 200 million yen (1227440 Euro). That’s a lot of Twinkies.
(Via Weird Asia News - both stories.)
The idea behind today’s wacky Japanese item isn’t really all that weird. No weirder than, say, a diamond encrusted iPod, anyway.
In March 2007, Bandai - the toy company - announced that they are going to make a model of a Gundam Mobile Suit from pure platinum. A diamond was also used as part of the head of the figure.
The figure is 12.5cm tall and weighs 1.4 kg. It is estimated to be worth US$250,000.
(Via Akihabara News.)