千の風になって: Become 1,000 Winds..

First, some Japanese Pizza by Pizza Hut:

Now with a full belly, to less serious matters.

The distinctly Oriental and exotic title of this post, since I'm not yet ready with anything new yet at the lab, comes from The Top 60 Japanese Buzzwords of 2007:

Sen no kaze ni natte (”become 1,000 winds”) is the title of a song performed by opera singer Masafumi Akikawa. Based on writer Man Arai’s translation of “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep,” an English-language poem penned by an unknown author, the song has sold more than a million CDs, making Akikawa the most successful opera singer in Japanese history. [More]

The Nipponese continue to entrance me with their super-sized human games based on video and computer gaming culture. Please watch the insanely hilarious video below of Human Tetris, and go to the original post if you really want to see the one with a sexy Russian девушка instead.



Nor do you want to miss a YouTube video of Melody Roads in Japan, described thusly in The Guardian:

The concept works by using grooves, which are cut at very specific intervals in the road surface. Just as travelling over small speed bumps or road markings can emit a rumbling tone throughout a vehicle, the melody road uses the spaces between to create different notes.

Depending on how far apart the grooves are, a car moving over them will produce a series of high or low notes, enabling cunning designers to create a distinct tune.

Patent documents for the design describe it as notches "formed in a road surface so as to play a desired melody without producing simple sound or rhythm and reproduce melody-like tones".