ninja restaurants

Following up on my 'ninjas are cool' post, found out that there are ninja-themed restaurants in Tokyo and New York. The restaurants are designed like a ninja castle, complete with trap doors, hidden passages, shuriken-printed napkins, and of course, ninja-waiters. They even have a 'torture chamber'. When the cook or the waiter messes up with your order, the other ninja-waiters tie him up and give him a good beating, 'ninja style' (lucky him, in the old ninja days, a ninja who made a mistake was not supposed to come home alive!). Too funny!
Check out this video on YouTube.(via tokyomango, thanks Lisa)
PS: oh, and the food looks great too!

ninjas are cool

Planners are always on the lookout for some examples of pattern recognition. Writing the previous post about Pucca, it reminded me of some other cool ninja stuff I came across over the years.
The first one, of course, was Samurai Kid (Kaze no Fujimaru): I used to be a big fan as a young boy. Samurai Kid was a boy who was raised by a samurai who taught him the art of ninji-tsu, doing cool stuff such as controlling the wind (he could create a twister with a single raise of his finger), and multiplying himself to confound his opponents (thanks for softindigoeyes for pointing me to this).

But then Hollywood produced the infamous American Ninja series, and ninjas started to get a bad rap. Eventually, it got parodied by the late Chris Farley, in the hilarious comedy Beverly Hills Ninja.
But ninjas are resilient, they always appear from nowhere when you least expect. We couldn't forget, of course, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for example.
More recently, some other productions are helping to revive the ninja legend.
One is the French cartoon (French??), Shuriken School (for those not fluent in ninja-speak, shuriken is that sharp, star-shaped ninja blade, which they throw with incomparable skill to kill their opponents). The Jetix webiste says that, "along with your usual Maths and English lessons, you can learn to be a Ninja and melt into walls, fly over rooftops, or disappear in a cloud of smoke". How cool is that?
Naruto, on the other hand, is for the more serious-minded ninja fan, definitely not the "cute ninja" type.
But a serious ninja fan will only be satisfied with a pilgrimage to the Ninja Museum, in Iga-Ueno, Japan, complete with secret passages and ninja paraphernalia.
You get to see ninja weapons...
...and some ninja demonstrations.
But the best part is that to get to the museum, you can take this charming ninja train.
Do you know any other cool ninja stuff?

the new hello kitty?

I spent some time during the holidays watching TV with my son (ok, maybe it was more like 'a lot of time'). Mostly "Power Rangers" stuff, but in the middle of it all, we came across "Pucca Funny Love", and it couldn't be a more refreshing thing.
Pucca is a young girl who is in love with a ninja boy called Garu. Garu, like all ninja boys, is not much into this romance thing, he wants to fight the world. So, as much as he likes Pucca, he tries to avoid any excessive demonstration of affection. Which is exactly what Pucca is all about. Whenever she can, she tries to steal a kiss from Garu, much to his embarrassment.
It is produced by Vooz, a Korean company, all in Macromedia Flash, with very little or no dialogue, and it's impossibly cute. Now, most guys would yawn at the very mention of the word 'cute', as in 'Hello Kitty cute', and I confess I'm not a big fan either, but this is simply too cute. Even my son, who nowadays is very much into "heroes vs. monsters" thing, had fun watching it.
When Pucca and Garu run, tiny sweat drops appear on their foreheads, as if attached by Velcro (it happens all the time with Garu. When he is kissed by Pucca, he flushes with embarrassment and a tiny drop appears on his face). It's so funny, perhaps because it is so true.