Tag: Packaging

  • Harajuku Girls

    We got in late last night. Roppongi. Mark as dangerous. The area I was told not to go was of course the first destination for the CSR crew boys here. A late night and a lack of sleep did not help getting up this morning, despite Tokyo being on our door step. Indeed, it took shaved ice with pure glucose sauce to kick me out of my stinker of a hangover. Roppongi.


    Ele, Kauru, Junko and I live it up


    Never have I seen so many energy drinks in one place – ‘functional’ drinks are huge in Japan, including Yakult and many other nutrition-packed liquids


    Kauru ties the fortune knot to the bar in Asakusa (not to be confused with Akasaka – our hotel)


    A local takes some time out to breathe on his Mild Seven


    Kimonos were a surprisingly common sight – wonderful

    After my shaved ice salvation and cruising around the Senso-Ji temple in Asakusa (confusing, since our hotel is in Asakasa) and emerging out of the metro to be faced with Philip Starke’s Asahi Museum work, we headed off to * to check out some of the shopping and then to Harujuku to meet Junko and Ian. Harajuku, for those not in the know, is the place in Tokyo to see the bleeding edge, drop-dead fashions -the goths, the rockers, the girls wearing makeup to enhance ugliness, the school girls, the Elvises and the zombies. I bought some sunglasses.


    Zombie woolly hats in Harajuku


    Utterly insane Pachinko – I played twice in games lasting all of 20 seconds and I have come to the conclusion you need a hole in your skull to play, and another to keep slotting money in.

    Dinner was Shibuya. A human hub, its road crossing is apparently the busiest in the world. It was here where I learnt that Ximending in Taipei gets its inspiration from. I swear, even down to the street lighting it was copied from this place. This was my vision for Tokyo and it happily matched it. Shabu Shabu was booked for dinner, which is a communal cooking pot with meat an vegetables comprehensively blew the doors off my local favourite Taipei version; I did not know it could be better. And I also did not know how much Japanese girls can eat in one sitting.


    Shibuya – waiting to charge!


    Ele, Ian and Kauru enjoy THE BEST SHABU SHABU I have ever had – and that is saying something. I am fairly sure my stomach became a solid ball of meat.

    Back to Akasaka, and after meeting up with Ele’s boss Gordon we headed straight for Karaoke to round off a great day in Tokyo – albeit a day with a rough, rocky and stormy start. Ending with Whiskies in the rooftop bar was perfect, and i have this feeling that I will be back in Japan sooner rather than later.


    Singing our hearts out guaranteed sexy voices the next day

  • Japanese Cigarettes

    Bumped into a friend in PS today and he had just come back from Japan. I’m not a smoker, but I could be persuaded with a packet as cool as this.

    The pack slides open sideways, and the main information is ‘H’ for heavy, along with the associated red colour. Apparently, the other packs feature different letters and colours for lights, menthols and so on.


    Alphabet Cigarettes – ‘H’


    In my frequent visits to PS: Cafe I am always taken by the fascination with all their glowing screens. Cell phones, notebook computers, portable games machines, PDAs, disctionaries, iPods … anything that sparkles, glows and allows them attachment to other people – even to the detriment of the people sitting next to them. Interestingly, I saw a pair of guys watching a TV show together off an iPod ‘with’ Video. Rather interesting.

  • Taiwanese Packaging

    Just to make you laugh and me cry…. I was just in the shop reaching for some orange juice. I reached ‘wrong’ and one of the 250ml dropped to the ground. Shit. So I made my apologies and paid for the juice (even though it was clearly an inferior bottle . plastic, i ask you!) but since I was still in the mood for the OJ I bought a nice big 1000ml bottle. Yum yum breakfast in my tum. Okay so I get home, but my motorbike helmet down, and then life turns into slow motion. My sixth sense realises that the big bottle of orange juice is slowly drifting towards the floor. Even my kung fu ninja samurai skills are not enough and sure enough 1 fucking litre of orange juice sprays itself evenly over my bastard floor. DO YOU KNOW HOW STICKY THIS STUFF IS? I have washed the floor twice now and yup I still get my shoes doing the sticky sticky walk walk thing (but I have to admit that when that does happen in a supermarket, when some kid spills fruit concentrate on the floor, walking accross it is immensely satisfying). So fuck the orange juice and fuck the floor. I am sitting on it now typing and when I get up I will get that same satisfying feeling as my arse peels itself from the surface.

  • Familiarity Breeds Contempt

    I simply had to take a photo of a cup of tea I had the other day. As you can see from the top it says: “Familiarity Breeds Contempt” …



    Familiarity Breeds Contempt – I think they thought it meant ‘content’

  • Essential Beer

    Some great products around the place…. “Essential Beer”…. yes it is.

    And the ubiquitous Hello Kitty brand… it gets EVERYWHERE. Any product you can think of has been infected with the pink disease…. but this one is quite cool. It’s a CD player.

    An amazing smoke mask that is somewhat more melodramatic than usual in Europe!

    The local condom brand “Stonker Donker”

    … and even numbers sprayed onto the side of crates become interesting: