What's better than celebrating Halloween with Lawson's original Halloween Melon Pan and a good session with Magical Hallowen pachislo machine (a mix of pachinko and slotmachines) from the Japanese company Kpe?! 
Maybe a Maid Cafè Halloween Party or a trip to Tokyo Disneyland?


Let's all forget the baka gaijin from the infamous Yamanote Halloween Party reported also by Boing-Boing. I feel that next year it will not be so popular after Nova going bankrupt...

On november 23 the finals of the 2007 edition of "Shooting Love: Shmups Skill Test" championship will be held in Tokyo at the Shinjuku (Nishiguchi) Club Sega.
This is the official promotional video of this event: click here to download.

Akibamap found this Famicom Ufo Catcher in friont of a DVD shop on the Akihaba main street. It looks like the ufo catcher in Osaka retrogame shop Tanteidan.

(D-addicts.com)  Few days ago Doremi (homage to Ojamajo Doremi anime series) posted the (hardsubbed) episode 9 of Hotaru no Hikari (originally broadcasted in Japan  this summer between Jul 11 and Sept 12). This drama is starred by the super kawaii Ayase Haruka (offical blog / fan blog). Last year she appeared in the  Tatta Hitotsu no koi and she will be the protagonist of next year movie  CyborgGirl.

Hotaru no hikari is based on the Hiura Satoru’s manga (drama adaptions of manga is a new trend started a couple of years ago and it's helping to get a younger audience for dramas once watched only by "obachan"...) . 
Hotaru is a twenty-something OL (office lady) who works for a famous interior design company. It's a glamorous job but Hotaru's private life is totally the opposite of glamorous. She lives alone, and when she isn't working she's mostly lazing about her rented house in training wear. She's not interested in men. In fact, she isn't interested in anything. "I'd rather lay around than fool around," is her motto...  she has become what in Japan is called a “dried fish”.
Her landlord is a bar owner, and one day his son, who has just separated from his wife, decides to move into this house, not knowing that someone is living there. He is shocked at the mess, but not as shocked as Hotaru. He turns out to be her boss, Takano... This drama is damn fun and you can donwload all episodes right now so you don't have to wait months to see the end like the dramas of the fall season that has just taken off.

Basic64 is inspired by the 8 bit sounds of the legendary Commodore 64.
It's not a straight emulation, but is based around the SID chip with some extras for that 8-bit retro game sound, lofi gritty noises or just plain oddness...  Seems that  Basic64 could became the "Rebirth" (Propellehead) for the chiptuners out there...
(If you prefer the real thing there are always the original SID cartridges made by prophet64.com. Free trial here)

Download zip file (1.2 MB)

Our idol tomodachi Amano Ai (photo gallery here,  here and here) is the main Race Queen of Exedy (a japanese company considered the world leader of performance sports and racing clutches that was also a  technical sponsor of the Fast and Furious 3: Tokyo Drift movie). You can meet her at Exedy booth at the 40th Tokyo Motor Show booth...  This weekend she will be at the 6th round of GT Super Taikyu series race (at Sportsland Sugo race course in Miyagi prefecture in northerast of Japan) but if you are going to this race don't forget your race queen umbrella since Sendai is very rainy!

Yesterday, several videogame hacking forums users reported that (thanks to Hellcat's Pandora Maker kernel 3.xx) they succesfully converted the PSP Slim batteries into the Pandora Battery (the definitive PSP downgrade and unbrick solution created by the collective Noobz:  a team of coders lead by the legendary Fanjita). Seems that the PSP Slim will be even more popular in the holiday season...

  This is the video of the week: Hatsune Miku cosplay and anime song cover of LUM chan!!
These Miku videos ranked 2nd and 3rd in my personal Weekly Miku chart! I'm pretty sure that this winter negi will be the bestselling vegetable in Akiba!! As reported by Zepy (via Moonphase)  Hatsune Miku manga called Hatsune Mix! will start serialization in Comic RUSH starting from the 2008 January issue. The author is going to be none other than KEI, the artist who did the original character design for Hatsune Miku.


Akibablog spotted several ero doujin mangas dedicated to Miku chan!

Game Labo magazine (a japanese magazine devoted to videogame hacking) published a guide to build a  Wii Balance Board (pressure-sensitive board) like controller. 
While waiting for the real Wii Fit with this controller we can play PAC MAN with our  feets.  Even tought written in Japanese the the building instructions are pretty simple (almost for average videogame hackera). A Classic controller is needed connect the board to the Wii.
Tip: of course this homebrew board is pretty limited but it doesn't have the 300lb Limit of the orginal Wii Balance Board so its ok also for super heavy gamers... Of course this homebrew board is pretty limited but it doesn't have the 300lb Limit of the orginal Wii Balance Board so its ok also for super heavy gamers...

Amano Ai has appeared on Youtube with several videos. Here you can watch her interview recorded during the shooting of her Love Potion DVD. Other sexy videos are here, here and here... Nose bleed mode ON!!

A japanese programmer has just started the porting of the PC98 emulator Neko Project II to the "just hacked" IPod Touch (The NEC PC-9801, or the PC-98, is a Japanese microcomputer manufactured by NEC. It is different from the IBM PC in many ways as it uses its own 16 bit C-Bus instead of the ISA bus. BIOS, I/O port addressing, memory management and graphics output are also different. PC98 first appeared in 1982 and many hentai games has been programmed for this platform). The japenese coder tested the game "Toshin city" from the legendary hentai game software house Alice Soft (アリスソフト: the game ruins but stops at the menu screen.

NicoNico video mashup dedicated to Tiny Xevious (for the japanese retro computer PC-6601) created trought Vocaloid 2 (featuring the virtual idol Hatsune Miku). Great techno pop for all retrogamers and synth freanks!

This is our friend Amano Ai new otaku column published by the legendary japanese gravure idol magazine Beppin School!  The column is dedicated to figures, dolls and garage kits. Ai chan will run this column for the next months and first part appeared in the october issue.

Doujin event Sunshine Creation 37  has featured several doujin dedicated to our beloved virtualoid idol Miku chan!
These are some photos taken by seiyunews:

Hatsune Miku mania seems getting bigger and bigger and we finally got the Miku robot dancing on Vocaloid 2 tunes...  to celebrate Miku chan we added a new widget (on the right column of this page) with a selection of the best songs produced by japanese otakus and posted on Nico Nico!

Original NicoNico video is here.

Today, M4125, a new Maid PC, has been presented at Akihabara Maid Cafè Maid Station. The core of this new otaku fetish PC is the infamous Mini ITX developed by : a 17 x 17 cm low-power motherboard form factorVIA Technologies. Mini-ITX has similarities to ATX, microATX, FlexATX and BTX form factors, but is significantly smaller: 170 mm (6.7 inches) by 170mm.
There iare many photos on Akiba Blog.

Wow! Finally the fall J Drama Season is started!  Wednesday at 10:00pm NTV has broadcasted the first episode of Hataraki Man, Hataraki Man: the new drama adaptation of the manga by Moyoco Anno, serialised in the seinen magazine Morning (adapted into a TV anime  broadcasted in Japan last year).
The story revolves around Hiroko Matsukata editor of a weekly magazine. She puts all she has into her work but despite Hiroko's prefessional success her life lacks romance (Wiki)...

Time to head to D-Addicts for a new season of Drama torrents!!

Today during the Frankfurt Bookfair I met William Pollock the master mind of the (already) legendary No Starch Press from San Francisco that recently released the geek bible: "Forbidden Lego".
During the next year seems that William will release some otaku oriented books, but we can't say anything right now or he will  kill us with a  Lego gun...



ps after attending so many events in Japan it has been kind of strange (or better, sexually shocking) to see so many grannies working as companions...

Yesterday at 6 pm MBS broadcasted the first episode of the brand new gundam series GUNDAM 00.
Read more on Danny's blog...

XMOE is a new japanese video hyper aggregator focused on anime and moe videos. It aggregates moe videos from Youtube, DailyMotion and other  Japanese popular video sharing sites like Veoh, AmebaVision, GUBA and Pandora.tv

Yesterday Broccoli held a conference at UDX in Akiba to announce the new AKIHABARA GAMERS (AKIHABARAゲーマーズ本店) shop that will be opened during 2008.
As stated in this official PDF the new shop will be located between Medialand and the actual Gamers shop in akiba. The old building has been torn down few months ago and recently that corner has been used for street promotions like the Red Bull free giveaway held recently...

I just found this trailer of the japanese sexy otaku idol Ai Chan's new DVD Love Potion!


This is a very nice photo gallery of Ai Chan photos:  Idol Wallpaper.