LIVEdigitally

Imagine taking the coolest aspects of Toys R Us, Best Buy, Target, and hmm.. Home Depot(?), throw em together, and weed out anything really mundane.  Now have lots of interactive displays, spread everything out onto 7 floors (each with its own checkout line unfortunately), and turn it Japanese. Next, put the store in downtown Tokyo (right by the Shinjuku station), and you have my favorite store in all of Tokyo.

Tokyu Hands: Creative Life Store.

My friend Yuichiro (we call him Woody, don’t ask) took me here about 4 or 5 years ago, and I’ve been craving it (and Ippudo ramen) ever since.  Its a very fun place, with lots of different types of appeal.

On the first floor I really liked the Let’s Play TV demonstrations, featuring 80s classic arcade hits like Xevious and Mappy (ok, so the premise and storylines weren’t as polished as today’s games, but you could pick up a controller and play the damn thing without learning the 14-button sequence to get your guy to jump!).  In the US we have some retro TV-based gaming systems, but these seemed like a bit more fun, I think because they were just less polished-looking.

Also featured on the first floor was a huge section devoted to customizing your cell phone, with stickers, studs, jewels, beads, and I think even raw fish.  There were also a few interesting carrying cases for iPod nanos in the mix.

Other highlights in the ‘bizarre gizmo’ section included: ifish and idog (some type of music-reactive iPod accessory), about a dozen different digital Sudoku games, and something called Cube World, which really just seemed like a collosal waste of money for the pure sake of LCD screens… ifish was my favorite piece of silliness.

On the remaining floors were other treasures, ranging from blocks of wood for your carving needs, small furniture, cooking supplies, and just about any type of gadget or gizmo related to any hobby or pastime you may have.  I spent some time looking through travel gadgetry, but unfortunately didn’t find anything particularly new to waste money on.

Got a few days in Tokyo?  Sure, go to Akihabara and Yodabashi, but you pretty much know what you are going to see there.  Head to Tokyu Hands for a lot more fun.  Who knows, maybe you’ll even get to comparison shop electronic toothbrushes?

It’s mid-May, and I’ve flown roughly 75,000 miles this year, on track to hit 100K by late June.  This is a lot by my standards, more than I’ve flown in any other given year (other than once).  Virtually every trip I seek out a few little tricks to make my travel a little easier.  I found my favorite neckrest at SFO in the “oh crap I forgot to buy someone a gift so I’ll pick up a cool San Francisco t-shirt” store (located near the useful Zoom Shop).  I learned to carry two carry-ons, my Slappa Velocity Pro backpack for my laptop, DVDs, and other electronics, and a second small bag with my books, magazines (which I’ll of course leave behind), Ambien and a couple of bottles of water.  Recently, I was introduced to www.seatguru.com, and it’s changed the way I travel.

SeatGuru has seat maps for most of the airplanes (and each of their various configurations), chock full of advice on a seat-by-seat basis. A sample “map” is on the right.  In a nutshell, green means good, yellow means beware, and red means don’t sit under any circumstances.  Their seat maps also include lavatories, galleys, AC power ports, and even the windows.  The best part is the seat-by-seat guide, which has some very practical information.  Here’s an example:

Seats 23G,H are standard Business seats, but the proximity of the galley can be bothersome. It tends to get very cold in this area during flight.

The site is great, and all thanks to Matthew Daimler, a frequent flier who started the site himself a few years back.  He recently launched a mobile version as well, http://mobile.seatguru.com/, which makes the last-minute seat changes at the check-in counter a little easier to do with confidence.  Can’t recommend it highly enough (although he doesn’t have China Airlines yet, so if you are flying them and are sitting back with the cattle like I usually do, get the aisle exit row seats, they’re great)

Another handy site I’ve recently been turned on to is www.bodyclock.com, if you have some international travel ahead, give it a visit.

Airlines spend 100-200 dollars on every bag they lose. While they only lose 5 out of every 1,000 bags, that can sure add up over a year. The New York Times had a good story today about future RFID tags for luggage (I hate linking to sites that require registration and try to avoid it normally). The technology is there and in the long term would save the airlines money and it would save passengers a lot of hair pulling. For right now, however, none of them want to make that initial investment. RFID technology is scary to some, and when the proposal is to put RFID tags on kids I can understand. But this is an application of RFID technology I think we can all get behind.