Charity Bizarre

Japan is an odd place. Hundreds of years of largely self-induced isolation mean that culture and tradition are deeply embodied in almost everything that goes on, work or play, yet there is still a fascination with things geijin. This, coupled with a national gift for mimickry (well, they did invent karaoke), makes for some alarming incongruity.

Like the Andean pipe band outside Daimaru department store - Peruvian down to their alpaca hats, ponchos and charangos, but entirely of Japanese lineage. Or the kids of the Ramsay Pipeband from Osaka, behind whom we marched up the hill to the Kobe Club Global Charity Festival at the weekend, to the tune of "Scotland The Brave". To watch, as it turned out, Japanese belly-dancers...

The Kobe Club has the faint whiff of local money meets ex-pat over a gin and tonic, and frankly it’s not a whiff we’ve been that keen to savour, but Jessica likes dressing up for the kids parade, and an ‘ethnic food corner’ is always a tempting proposition.

This was our second year, and it was fun to see the same faces again. The aggressive German bloke with his composting worms occupied the same pitch as before, this time refining his ‘Recycle and save the planet for your children…’ opening gambit to “Kids like worms…” He also had a snappy new product name - ‘Can Of Worms’- but this time we were not falling for any of his eccentric earthworm eulogising.

The crap kung-fu guy was back, performing his stiff-armed, martial arts histrionics to the theme-tune of ‘Pirates Of The Caribbean’ (with carboard cutlass). As if this wasn’t bizarre enough, the fact that he was a lanky white Caucasian gave some reverse polarity to the whole ‘incongruous’ leitmotif. Disappointingly, there was no repeat invitation extended to the existentialist female dancer with a plastic bottle on her head.

But it was, as they say, ‘all in a good cause’, and we did what all good citizens do on occasions like this and bought a collection of sorry old tat - tat du monde, no less - with a smile and an inflated sense of our own benevolence.

State-sponsored Nerdism

You might expect it from some cheesed-off pen-pusher in Dundonald, but certainly not from the hard-working salarymen of Chiyoda. The Civil Service it would seem, is so universally boring that employees across the world prefer to spend their working hours editing Wikipedia.

Only recently, the Northern Ireland Civil Service was embarrassed by a software tool that can track the IP addresses of anyone who edits this 'people-powered' online encyclopaedia. The edits were pretty puerile - changing an entry on the Koran and adding links to websites that sell Viagra - and a sad endictment of the calibre of an industry that accounts for a mind-bending 63% of the economy of Northern Ireland (for the UK as whole - which includes that crazy NI figure - it's 43%).

But their state-sponsored Japanese counterparts spend their time, among other things, honing the pages devoted to Gundam, the giant manga robot. Gundam - originally known as Freedom Fighter Gunboy - dates back to the late seventies, and has been a major contributor to the phenomenon known here as otaku, or nerd adults.

Japan is so gadget-tastic that it's hardly any wonder that geekdom is in the ascendancy. USB-specialists SoundAlliance make a whole variety of wacky tech products ranging from the slightly useful - memory sticks in the shape of sushi, 'omelette' mice - to the somewhat strange - 'ghost radar' - to the downright weird - business card holders fashioned to look like raw Kobe beef.

Also much in demand - they can only be bought online, and there is a waiting list - is a mouse pad which claims to alleviate RSI, but is actually an enterprising and tactile combo of eroge - manga porn - and silicon implants. Not quite sure why there's a lady pictured tweaking them though.

The latest must-have gadget is Sony's curiously-named 'Rolly'. I say curiously named because it combines letter-sounds - 'L' and 'R' - that give the Japanese the most phonetic distress, so it could be 'Rolly', 'Lolly', 'Lorry' or 'Rorry', depending on how lithe - or indeed rithe - your tongue is feeling. Nice one, Sony.

Although the initial reaction is "Wow, that's cool!", on further inspection it's actually a case of mistaken identity. It's just, well, eccentrically different. We had one demonstrated to us at the local denki-store (you can't buy them yet, you have to reserve them, and even then the girl didn't know how long you would be waiting before you got one). It does all the spinning about stuff, as advertised, but the sound is pretty tinny, Jack would rip the ears off it in seconds, and it has 'fad' written all over it. And it's not cheap, at the best part of 200 quid.

This is kids' stuff - MP3-player meets Furby - and not anything the hardcore otaku is going to fall for. But don't take my word for it, just ask the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.