A Japanese company develops an aura sensing phone strap

Solid Alliance has developed a new phone accessory, an aura sensing phone strap. The accessory, dubbed "aura tama" strap or aura ball strap, claims to be able to sensor the user's aura and changes to one of eight different colors depending on the energy the person is omitting. The aura-tama will be packaged with one of three "power stones:” crystal, rose quarts or amethyst.

The aura tama strap will be available beginning in June.

Japan developes a digital stamp card for your cell phone

The website GuruNavi (Gourmet Navigator) has launched GuruNavi Touch a new "stamp card" for your cell phone. Participating restaurants now feature a “GuruNavi Touch" kiosk where customers can swipe their Felica enabled cell phones, osaifu keitai, to receive a digital "stamp." The stamp features an URL to an online lottery which users can access from their phone to win prizes. First prize is a 10,000 yen gift card, second prize is GuruNavi logo merchandise and the consolation prizes consists of a ring tone or flash game for the phone. Each user can only get one stamp per restaurant and the promotion lasts till August 31, 2007.

Image from Mezame Magazine June 2007 p35.

Food courts done Tokyo style.

While Tokyo Midtown, the new establishment in Roppongi, features an almost endless list of boutique dinning, hidden in the basement is an inexpensive food court. Before you get images of Panda Express and Hot Dog on a Stick in your head, Tokyo Midtown's food court is one large restaurant called Okawari.jp. Okawari.jp features separate stations which customers visit depending on what they want. Okawari.jp offers anything from a cup of coffee to a full gourmet meal. The front station offers sandwiches, sweets and a coffee bar. Behind this is the "lunch box" station where customers can choose from 60 different side dishes. Okawari.jp also has an open kitchen at the back, which serves regional specials. This month the station offers regional fare from Kyushu and will feature food from Shikoku in June. The food court also offers a full service bar, a smoothie stand and a Kobe patisserie that cooks desserts onsite. Each station is separate, and customers pay at each station. The staff is very friendly and bilingual which helps when trying to decide what to eat.

At night Okawari.jp completely changes. The back turns in to a trendy restaurant with an open kitchen o the front remains casual dinning with open seating.

Okawari.jp is located on b1 of Tokyo Midtown.

Pirates on wheels!

In an attempt to further promote a movie that everyone is already going to see, there was a Pirates of the Caribbean truck driving around Shibuya today. The truck plays the Pirates theme and has the promotional movie banner. Unlike most promotional trucks, this one is equipped with a rotating mannequin of Jack Sparrow at the back. Enjoy, ladies. This is probably the closest you can get to Jack Sparrow.

Pizza in a cone?

That's what Kono Pizza, a fast food restaurant is offering its customers. Instead of preparing toppings on a traditional flat crust, the toppings are placed inside a cone shaped crust (think an ice cream cone) and then baked. The reasoning behind this strange creation is that cone pizza eliminates the mess and need for silverware that traditional pizza slices require. Cone Pizza can be eaten on the run. Kono Pizza offers customers 7 different types of pizza cones and 2 dessert cones. Pizza cones are prepared freshly and cooked on site in a specially designed conveyer belt oven.

Kono Pizza currently has 5 stores in Tokyo and 1 in Nagoya.

Saturday

Now that the rain's cleared up its time to . . . take it easy!

Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End: I saw it, so you don't have to

So we went to see Pirates 3 today. Thanks to the international date line, that's almost a full day earlier than most places.

All I can say was that the film disappointed me. Or in less eloquent terms, WHAT THE HELL? I'm going to have to give this post a spoiler alert warning, just incase you didn't want to know everything about Pirates 3.

So suddenly it the crew (Elizabeth, Barbossa and everyone from the second film) is in Singapore needing the help of Sao Feng, a pirate lord who happens to have the charts that will lead our pirate heroes to the end of the world. We also find out that apparently there are 9 pirate lords, each with a piece of 8, who have called a meeting and each lord is bound by the code to attend. Barbossa is one, Sao Feng is another and apparently Jack Sparrow was one too. The only problem being he's dead without a successor. Barbossa is very keen on everyone attending this meeting. So now we know why he wants Jack back. So after a big fight scene with the East India Company they are all on their way. But, oh no! Will Turner makes a deal with Sao Feng that the Black Pearl will belong to him after they recover it in Davy Jones’ locker so that he can save his father. If you forgot, Will vowed to kill Davy Jones to free his father. I don't see why he doesn't just plan on seizing the heart and forcing Jones to free his father, but that would require analytical thinking and he's just a black smith.

Anyways moving on. So they make it to the end of the world and we have a really weird sequence with Jack in limbo. He's crewing a ship with a crew that entirely consist of himself, but guess what? They're just hallucinations! Eventually he makes it to the shore of limbo (?) and is greeted by Barbossa, Elizabeth and everyone. After much discussion he agrees to come along.

Now since this film was over 2hours and 45 minutes long, I'm going to skip over the middle and give you the bullet points.

1) The East India Company controls Davy Jones and they are destroying all the pirates in the Caribbean

2) Commodore Norrington is now an admiral

3) The E.I.C. kills Elizabeth's father and they see him in the underworld. We learn that Davy Jones is supposed to be ferrying souls to the underworld, but he isn't.

4) Upon escaping the underworld the crew is betrayed by Sao Feng and the E.I.C. Sao Feng gets the Pearl. Jack then secretly makes a deal to lead E.I.C. to the Pirate meeting on Ship Wreck Island.

5)The E.I.C. betrays Sao Feng. Barbossa and Sao Feng then strike a deal that he gets the Black Pearl and Sao Feng gets Elizabeth. They then leave on another ship.

4) We find out that Tia Dalma (the voodoo woman) was the woman who Jones was in love with and, gasp! He was once human!

5) Barbossa plans to release Calypso, Goddess of the Sea who is now bound in human form.

6)Will turner plans to betray the crew. Jack kicks him off the ship. Allowing Will Turner to betray the crew again and strike a deal with the E.I.C. to take them to Ship Wreck Island since he now has Jack's compass.

7) Chow thinks that Elizabeth is Calypso. He is killed when his ship is attacked and he makes her Captain.

8) Admiral Norrington and Jones attacked Sao Feng’s ship. He is happy to see Elizabeth. Apparently he didn't know that her father was murdered by the E.I.C.

9) Elizabeth meets Boot Strap and learns that if Will fulfills his promise, that he will become the new Davy Jones, since who ever kills Davy Jones must replace him.

9 )Norrington releases Elizabeth and her crew, but Boot Strap kills him since he has betrayed the Captains/E.I.C.'s order.

10) Everyone makes it to Ship Wreck Island for the Pirate meeting. Barbossa wants to set Calypso free and everyone else disagrees. We are introduced to Jack's Father - Keith Richards who is in charge of the Pirate Code. Elizabeth is named Pirate King in a vote and using her new found power says that they should fight Davy Jones and the E.I.C.

11) Tia and Davy Jones see each other for the first time in 10+ years. He still loves her, she says they can be together when she is Calypso again.

12) Will, Beckett and Jones meet with Elizabeth, Jack and Barbossa. She trades Jack to Jones, to fulfill his debt, for Will and the battle is on.

12) While the Pirate ships face off the E.I.C, Barbossa has taken all the Pirate lords' piece of eights (which are random items) and uses them to set Calypso free. She turns into the 50 foot woman and proceeds to disappear into a wave of crabs. Then she summons a storm and a giant whirlpool.

13) The Flying Dutchman and the Black Pearl sail into the giant whirlpool to battle. Jack escapes the brig and captures the chest containing the heart of Davy Jones.

And this is where everything goes to hell. During a massive battle scene in the rain in which vast numbers of CG pirates are killed, Will proposes to Elizabeth and Barbossa marries them will battling Pirates and the British Navy. If this hasn't already, it should set off warning bells. You know something bad is going to happen to one of them, and it does. Davy Jones kills Will Turner. Yes you read right, WIll Turner dies. But guess what, as he's dying Jack has him stab Davy Jones' heart. So Jones dies and Will dies too. But here's where it gets gross, since he is required to fill Davy Jone's now vacant position, his father, yes his father, cuts out Wills still beating heart and puts it in the chest. Problem solved, only not! Now Will can only come on land every 10 years! So that's a great relationship. He's the newly married, undead captain of the Flying Dutchman. What the hell!? Throughout the whole film they hinted that Jack Sparrow was going to fill this position to escape death, but at the last minute they kill Will Turner. So him and Elizabeth get one day together before he's off to sea for 10 years. Some happy ending for them. Sure Jack and Barbossa get a perfectly fine ending. They're going after the Fountain of Youth. Oh and if you sit through the 15- 20 mins long credits your treated to a scene that takes place 10 years later where Elizabeth and her son await Will's return. Well isn't that nice. All that work saving the world and what do the two of them get? 10 years apart and 1 day together, until she eventually succumbs to death at a young age since it's the 1700s. What a way to turn this into a morality play. Elizabeth and Will are both punished for there individual betrayals while Barbossa and Jack, who both are murderous, merciless pirates, have perfectly happy lives. WTF?

And why is Boot Strap such a weak character who is now is practically brain dead? What was up with Jack’s hallucinations with multiple versions of himself? How was there any point to that screen time since he didn’t become the new Davy Jones? And why did they even bother creating all new Pirate Lord characters that didn’t do anything in the final battle? And finally what was the point to introducing Jack’s father? He didn’t do anything!

If you haven't figured it out yet, we did not enjoy this film.