Categories
Advertising

Cool Coca-Cola advertisement

I love this Coca-Cola advertisement that “connects” in a mysterious way the vending machines with the building in the background. Seen at on of the entrances to Shinjuku Gyoen Mae park.

Coca-Cola advertisement

Coca-Cola advertisement

Coca-Cola advertisement

Categories
Technology

Lettuce-producing machine

Dentsu Facility Management Inc has begun selling a machine able to produce around 60 lettuces per day without the need of sunlight. At the moment, they are only available in Japan; the first clients are big restaurant chains because the cost is quite high: 75,000 euro (around 100,000 USD). Will we have some day our own refrigerators at home able to produce lettuces or other vegetables?

The pictures of this lettuce-producing machine reminds me of the pictures of the underground place that is located under Tokyo station.

Lettuce machine

Lettuce machine

Lettuce machine

Source: Greendiary

Categories
Japanese

InoKashira VS InoGashira

Japanese language is written using three alphabets: Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. However since Japan began being “connected” to the Western world there have been several attempts to write the Japanese language using our alphabet. The basic idea of all these attempts consists on emulating the pronunciation of Japanese characters the best possible way using the Latin alphabet. Even though none of the attempts has been perfect the most used method nowadays is the Hepburn romanization.

I have never taken really seriously to learn perfectly the rules to write Japanese with our alphabet because I find it quite absurd; it’s like if I would try to write English with Japanese characters. However it is true that for some people it’s quite useful to start learning the language; although I don’t recommend it. It is hard, but it is better to start learning Japanese directly with hiragana.

Notice for example this sign where the word 井の頭 is written as inoKashira and then as inoGashira. To say the truth, the word is quite complicated, technically it would be written inoKashira, but when pronouncing it in Japanese quickly it sounds more like what would be written inoGashira. It’s not something very relevant but it’s funny to see the word written in different ways in the same sign!

Inokashira