Wacky Japanese Stuff » Art

Beautiful Japanese Barcodes

Nils — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:09:32 +0000

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.)

Japanese Jewelry Cake Extravaganza

Nils — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 11:09:46 +0000

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.)

Gundam figurine in platinum

Nils — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 06:00:42 +0000

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.)