Bouncing Red Ball

Great videos of La Machine’s gigantic spiders prowling the streets of Yokohama. The giant arachnids from Nantes, France are part of the months-long program of events that celebrates the 150th opening of Yokohama Port.

Is it me or is there lately a trend to construct and showcase giant creatures and robots in Tokyo?
Tomorrow, another huge robot is coming to Tokyo.
Towering 7.2 meters (23.6 feet) above the crowd, Giant Torayan, a gigantic mechanical contraption that sings and dances and spews fire will debut (”wreck havoc” according to the video) in [...]

As if giant reptiles and radioactive moths are not enough, Gundam has to take care of another menace that has invaded the shores of metropolitan Tokyo.
As preparations for the 150th anniversary of the opening of Yokohama Port get underway, French technicians have been surreptitiously assembling the appendages of [The Spider], two which will be unleashed [...]

Koki Tanaka is a “mixed-media artist who uses video and found objects to create iconic reflections of everyday life”. His art “invests mundane objects and actions with meanings both amplified and understated“.
The main strength of Tanaka’s deceptively understated art is using ordinary objects in unpredictable and unusual ways to change our perception of everyday existence. [...]

The Green Island Project: “What if the roads are covered with grass? What would people think of it? This project started with those ideas.”
And so we have these highly improbable yet visually arresting images of Tokyo covered with grass, from Shinjuku to Gotanda to Yoyogi. Yes, we can only imagine.
Gotanda, Tokyo

Shinagawa, Tokyo

Shinjuku, Tokyo

Yoyogi, Tokyo

{via Japansoc [...]

Check out Toyota’s impressive-looking Lexus Premium 2-seater Sports LF-A, Gazoo Racing’s entry into the 24 Hours Nürburgring endurance racing in Nürburg, Germany, one of the most eye-catching muscle cars on display at the recent Tokyo Auto Salon in Makuhari Messe.
I bet this thing would outrun any one of those cars in the Road Monsters of [...]

If you’ve gone to see the ocean in Japan, you’ve likely seen hundreds of tetrapods hugging the beach. These are huge, four-legged, naturally interlocking concrete structures that are meant to dissipate the force of waves hitting the breakwater. Some Japanese say they disfigure the coastal areas but many are totally in love with the simple [...]

You’ve probably seen this very popular image in flickr–or maybe you haven’t, so here it is. “Rainbow of Peace” by jasohill (twitter), one of whose photos I have featured before in Bouncing Red Ball.

{You can see its 2048×1536-pixel splendor here.}
It is said that if you fold a thousand cranes, one of the mystical animals of [...]