Bari Bari Value is a TV show in Japan where they auction off stuff from celebrities and give the proceeds to charity. Tonight, they were auctioning off an original first series Gundam Plastic Model (from 27 years ago) and a poster for the latest Gundam Series (see link below). In less than an hour it was bidding up over the equivalent of $50 million US dollars. At least, that’s the current price. It may go even higher since there’s still 6 days left in the auction. Some Otakus have way too much money.

EDIT: It seems that they removed all the fake bids that drove the price up and now the bids are “realistic.” The current bid is now over ¥3,000,000 which is about $30,000 USD. That’s still quite a lot of money for a plastic model.

【世界バリバリ☆バリュー】初代ガンプラ＆新作ガンダムポスター

Tokyo Stormtrooper aka Danny Choo was the guest host on Blog TV tonight. I guess the regular hosts, the guy with the cowboy hat and that other chick, wanted to go out and do something normal tonight (it’s a live show) so they filmed this special segment about Akihabara which really didn’t have anything to do with Blogs. But anyway..

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Kabu カブ means “stock” and tore トレ is short for “trade.” I bought this game for the DS out of curiousity. It’s an interactive tutorial about how to do online stock trading put out by Konami. When I bought the game they gave me this net trading beginner’s guide by Zai magazine and a form to sign up for an account at Monex Securities. In Japan, a great part of the DS lite’s success is the huge number of non-gaming adults buying them to play educational games.

Kabutore カブトレ is one of these with a marketing tie-up to promote both Zai and Monex. A kind of online trading starter kit for DS lite and a pretty neat idea. The game itself is a very simple tutorial, the main character is a girl named “Nozomi” who was your classmate in high school. You meet her after 10 years and suddenly she invites you to go to an online trading coffee shop. It’s a lame story. I’ve only just started playing the game which begins at a time over a year ago because the Nikkei 225 starts at 12,291.73, and then progresses daily so you can see your investments go up or down. Unfortunately, there’s no real time information (obviously this would be impossible) and there are only a few stocks you can actually choose to trade, one of them being Konami (9766). But the details of the market data are pretty good. They even include a fairly complete set of Toyo Keizai fundamental data although I haven’t checked whether the data is real or fake. I’m still at the tutorial stages so there might be more depth to the game later on.

There’s also a part where you use the pointer to “guess” the trend of the chart by drawing the missing trendline. You get points when you guess correctly. A kind of pointless exercise really. Like most guides to stock trading in Japan, the game deals mostly with how to execute a trade and examine charts (Japanese investors love charts) There’s no discussion of investment strategies or how to choose a good stock. This is not a surprise since online brokers make their money from transaction fees so they don’t want investors to buy and hold.

If you’re thinking about opening up an account and trading Japanese stocks this would be a fun way to learn the basics. The Japanese stock market is really exciting and there are cool stocks like Nintendo (7974) and Mazda (7261) and Square-Enix (9684) and also unique funds like the Love Hotel Fund and the Idol Fund to invest in. Nintendo, by the way is doing really well this year. Check out this chart. If you had bought some of their stock at the beginning of this year you would have doubled your money by now. Since my work is directly related to online stock trading in Japan, I’m planning to write a primer for beginners in English, probably sometime in the new year.

Got this tip from Patrick. At BicCamera, they are offering Wii pre-orders for Biccamera/Suica Card holders. And also pre-orders of 20GB/60GB Playstation 3s guaranteed delivery between 12/20-12/25. Just in time for Xmas. This is your chance to get one!

Bic Camera Yurakucho Annex has 2 cool displays to promote Star Trek’s 40th Anniversary this month. I’m only a casual Star Trek fan and cannot speak Klingon or recite from memory the serial numbers of every Starship Enterprise. But I did find the exhibit very interesting and felt like watching some of the original shows again.

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The Tokyo Game Show, otherwise known as TGS, started today out in Makuhari. It was press day and unlike Danny, who is lucky enough to get press passes, my work has nothing to do with games so I can’t justify going to the show as business research. My company does let me go to the financial technology show and online investment fairs, but you know, there are never any girls in bikinis that hand out cool stuff. All I ever get are brochures with lots of charts and numbers and kanji I can’t read. Anyway, Danny’s got his write up posted with lots of photos and more coming over the next 4 days. I’m going to the show on Sunday and still debating whether I will lug my camera with me or not. To be honest, I take a lot of pictures at these shows but I don’t really look at them afterwards and it just takes up hard drive space.

On the way home after cycling the Yamanote line last week, I happened to pass by the Square Enix Character Shop on Koshu Kaido.

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Robbie got me hooked on LocoRoco!! That crazy song makes no sense but I can’t help smiling while playing this game!! In case you’re wondering about the name, it’s derived from ころころ or “korokoro” or “corocoro” which means “rolling.” You use the L and R keys to roll the blobs back and forth. So L + R + corocoro = LocoRoco.

I was searching on google for a picture of a Fuji TV announcer and happen to find this blog by Pekopo, whoever he is. Anyway, he had many screen grabs of lovely ladies on TV and while looking thru his archives I was surprised to find a few of MY IMAGES posted!!! What are the odds? Like this one and this one and this one and this one. I wondered how many more of my images are out there in cyberspace taking on a life of their own. I’m reminded of the first Star Trek film. Will a photo I took be sent off into cyberspace only to become sentient and come back to haunt me in the future? I felt it was just fair for me to post some of his cooler photos here. Like the Great Mazinger (above)

and this Sazae-san iTunes + iPod gif

I got this postcard in the mail today announcing that they’re closing the Yurakucho Sofmap!! Shock! Now where am I going to go to sell off my stuff? The last day is May 7th which is the last day of Golden Week and also the last day of Bic Camera’s Suica card campaign that allows you to get 3% more points for purchases with the credit card until May 7th. Coincidence? Sofmap just could not or would not compete with Bic because they only offered 1% points on their products and their prices were always a bit higher. Why would you even buy anything at Sofmap? The shop was always dead and I found most of the staff either rude or indifferent (except one guy at the digital camera corner). The new law where you can no longer sell used electronics more than 5 years old may have something to do with it as well. I predict and hope it will be a giant Tsutaya. Yurakucho is in need of a big video/dvd/cd store. Maybe even a Starbucks/Tsutaya/Bar/Karaoke/Onsen would be neat, wouldn’t it?

The Yamato Museum was about 40 minutes by train from the Mazda Museum. We got there just before closing time. I’m glad I brought my 20mm lens converter for my GR because that 1/10 scale Yamato was BIG!! The core exhibit showing Kure city’s history of ship building in the context of WW2 was excellent and I wish I had time to watch all the movies and read all the displays. More pictures below.

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A few years ago, only sites like spymac.com would rumor about what Apple would release at Macworld. But now sites like CNN, NYTimes, BusinessWeek are guessing what next big thing will be coming. I’m trying to decide whether I want to stay up late tonight to watch the keynote speech. I’m hoping there will some sort of Apple Compatible Widescreen TV. That I would definitely fork out cash for.

EDIT: Apparently, there will be no live webcast of the Keynote this year. What?!
:-(