Author: ageekinjapan

Categories
Japanese

Gold 金 Chosen as 2012 Kanji of the Year

At the end of every year the Japanese people choose a kanji character that represents the sentiment of their society during the year that is coming to an end. The most voted character this year has been 金 (kin, きん) which means “gold”. It has been chosen because 2012 has been an olympic year, the year of a total solar eclipse and also in honour of Shinya Yamanaka, which was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

A monk in Kiyomizu temple in Kyoto writes every year the kanji chosen as kanji of the year:

kanji of the year 2012

Source: Wsj.

Categories
Music

All I Want for Christmas, Touch You!

The Xmas video of Touchy Camera was just released. Touchy is a project by Eric, Tomohiko and Asia that experiments with the social reaction to “being physically touched”. Touchy can’t see (because of his helmet) unless somebody touches him creating a closed electrical circuit. The idea is difficult to explain so it’s better that you watch the video in which I make a brief cameo as a generic tokusatsu when Touchy gets confused and almost steals my scooter!


Capture of my cameo in the video 😉

Next year I will publish an interview with Touchy explaining more about the technology and the idea behind the project. Here you have one of the photos that I took during the interview with Touchy which I still have to edit.

Categories
Photography

Best 2012 Photos

It’s already the time to choose the best photos taken during the year. This time I’ve put them together in a video with music of Ryuichi Sakamoto. I have also included photos from my trips outside Japan. The video is quite long (12 minutes) and there’s maybe too many photos but I still like the result a lot and I think in the future it will remind me well of the great memories lived this year. Full screen, loud music, relax and let your imagination flow:

If you like a photo in particular and you want to have it in high resolution I have put them together in this Flickr photo set:

Mejores
Flickr photoset with all the photos

Best photos of past years: