News and Coverage
Follow ETech on Twitter ETech Facebook Group ETech LinkedIn Group Sign Up for the Newsletter (login required) ETech Keynote Video ETech RSS Feed Attending? Add to Dopplr Tag with del.icio.us ETech 2009 Schedule ConfLink

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

Average rating
***..
(3.25, 4 ratings)
Add your rating
Lisa Katayama (TokyoMango), Fumi Yamazaki (Fumi Yamazaki)

What do Japanese geeks, teenagers, and high school girls do for hours behind their computers and cell phone screens? Lisa Katayama and Fumi Yamazaki demonstrate several examples of web apps and gadgets that are fun, creative, and uniquely Japanese. Through these, we see how crucial, hard-to-grasp aspects of Japanese culture materialize as new obsessions when technology is thrown into the mix.

Photo of Lisa Katayama

Lisa Katayama

TokyoMango

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.

Photo of Fumi Yamazaki

Fumi Yamazaki

Fumi Yamazaki

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.

  • Sun Microsystems
  • Yahoo! Inc.
  • IEEE
  • Make magazine
  • Orange Labs

Sponsorship Opportunities

For information on exhibition and sponsorship opportunities at the conference, contact Yvonne Romaine at yromaine@oreilly.com

Media Partner Opportunities

Download the Media & Promotional Partner Brochure (PDF) for information on trade opportunities with O'Reilly conferences or contact mediapartners@ oreilly.com

Press and Media

For media-related inquiries, contact Maureen Jennings at maureen@oreilly.com

ETech Newsletter

To stay abreast of conference news and to receive email notification when registration opens, please sign up for the ETech Conference newsletter (login required)

Contact Us

View a complete list of ETech contacts