Whether you are big, small, active or lazy, here is your monthly round-up with a little something for everyone.
Here is a handy little product for the digitally well endowed — a smartphone touch-pen that plugs into the device's earphone jack. The audio jack accessory trend has really been taking off lately and it is perhaps the contemporary answer to the keitai (mobile phone) strap craze of the 1990s and early 2000s that saw many a Japanese girl's phone weighed down by dozens of cute trinkets. As smartphones tend not to have the little loop for straps, the new way to personalize your phone — when you aren't listening to tunes — is by jamming a little plug in the phone's audio jack which is topped with a decoration: jewels, flowers, and cartoon characters seem to be pretty popular. The Evergreen touch pen is interesting because it is more function than decoration. If, for whatever reason, you don't want to touch your screen — extreme manicure, past run in with the yakuza, fat fingers — this dialing wand will have you banging out emails with precision and leave no smudges on the screen. It comes in five colors (red, purple, green, black, and silver) and retails for a mere ¥299. And if you pair the touch pen up with an audio-jack splitter, you can still type away while listening to your music. Available online at www.donya.jp.
Where the Evergreen touch pen is useful for those with fat fingers, this next product is really just for parents with fat wallets who want to spoil their kids — or teach them about fuel efficiency and emissions while they are young. The sleek one-seater toy LEXUS LS600hL — which, like the Model-T Ford of old, comes only in black — is perfect for tots too posh for tricycles and is made by A-kids (www.a-kids.com). It has really great details in the dashboard, body and rims and even has working headlights and a sound system built into the headrest. It retails for ¥44,100.