Japanese Tech Culture: Demystifying "Weird" Japanese Toys and Tools

Lisa Katayama is a bilingual journalist and Japanese contemporary culture expert. Her blog, TokyoMango.com, is an archive of fun products, strange news, and cultural tidbits from her native Japan. Her book, Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan, is a collection of life hacks that use ordinary objects to do extraordinary things. Recent assignments include stories for Wired, PopSci, Boing Boing, Gizmodo, and PRI’s Studio360. She has a MA in Human Rights from Columbia and lives on the West Coast.

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Fumi Yamazaki is a bilingual traveller / researcher / consultant / journalist, a guest researcher at The University of Electro-Communications, and a researcher at Joi Ito’s Lab. She formerly worked for NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, the largest telecom in Japan), Internet marketing research company Interscope, and Digital Garage where she was involved in VC investment, incubation of startups and hosting conference and events. She was the founding member of Technorati Japan, involved in various free culture movements including Creative Commons Japan and iCommons. She writes various blogs including fumijp.blogspot.com, a commentary blog about various aspects of Japan and fumi25.vox.com which she introduces interesting videos from NicoNicoDouga, a popular video sharing site in Japan.

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