Sanrio's Hello Kitty is a mainstay of Japanese popular culture and, inadvertantly but perhaps illustratively, the most frequent personality in uBlog's "Only in Japan." We've seen her charming children into riding commercial transportation and sitting for the barber; she inspires a trinket empire, fine jewelry and idols. She really has had, as they say, a wonderful life.

And now, on her 30th Anniversary, she accepts invitations to conduct the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. Life grabs art's arm and do-si-dos. Then curtsies.

New yen, the Japanese jet set, the Terminator in Tokyo, rooster sugarcombs and the kind of "global warming" even a red-blooded rightist could buy into in this week's sonnet to pop commercialism's Salzburg.

As the Mainichi explains, this Noh actor is performing Hagoromo, where one finds such dulcet passages as "the heavenly feather-robe moves in accord with the wind," printed in this 1916 translation by Ezra Pound. Here's Noh in the eyes of a devoted foreigner:

In general, Japanese Noh plays are not very dramatic, although they are beautiful, since the text is full of poetical allusions and the dances, though slow, are extremely elegant. It is this very beauty which makes Noh a living art form still, over six hundred years after it developed, and which has caused all subsequent Japanese theatrical forms to draw on aspects of Noh. Kabuki, for example, has lifted complete Noh plays into its vernacular, as well as deriving many of its technical aspects of performance from Noh.

The Noh theater still speaks to audiences today, as evinced by the crowds which still rush to buy tickets for performances at the National Noh Theater, and at the five theaters belonging to the five troupes of Noh. It is a truely timeless artform, which speaks to modern audiences as it did to the noblemen and women of the Muromachi period.

Fascinating stuff, though when it comes to flashy-wardrobe stage plays in the Orient, Beijing Opera stole this neophyte's heart first. From the Chang'an Theatre:

Yes, the following is a very American thing to say, but — think of the costume party possibilities. I certainly am. A little more greasepaint to scrub at the end of the night, perhaps, though well worth the impression.

In Tokyo, Shigeru Miyamoto holds up Nintendo's new portable video game device, the DS, which is something like Johannes Gutenberg showing off a Smith-Corona. Miyamoto is the father of modern gaming, creator of hallmark 1980s titles Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers, and the Legend of Zelda series; and latter-day smash hits Star Fox and Pikmin. If you've played a video game, its designers owe something to Miyamoto.

As would be expected for often over-devoted button-smashers' golden calf, Miyamoto doesn't necessarily have fans so much as followers. Here's a biography of the genius for the sober.

Normally I offer comment to the Mainichi Shimbun's snapshots of all things Japanese but this one deserves the paper's own caption:

Masumi Gotoh, president of Japanese telecommunications-equipment company Let's Corp., explains about the company's new invention called Ka-on, that turns the petals and leaves of flowers into an audio speaker. The ka-on, which means "flower sound" in Japanese, consists of a donut-shaped magnet and coil at the base of a vase that hooks up to a CD player, stereo or TV.

Place the flowers into the vase, turn on Ka-on and the magnet and coil relay the sound vibrations up the stems through the plant's water tubes.

It brings a new meaning to "audio boutique." Some advertising board is no doubt perfecting a commercial that depicts a mass of Ka-on-activated plants smashing the windows of their greenhouse in slow motion to AC/DC's "Back in Black." When Let's Corp. makes a hasta bunch put out like a subwoofer, I'll call it genius.

It's Friday, my print batch is done, and I'm off for a well-deserved falafel wrap at the West Side of Cleveland's best source of Near Eastern food that's cleverly disguised as a deli.

Is it another crash-sunken spacecraft or a very sincere investment in reinforced plexiglass? The Mainichi and those two zoo-goers know for sure, a wink at all things monochromatic and ursine; and part of this week's helping of sushi, Typhoon Number 18, Japanese road races and Pacific surf.

With the 2004 Olympic Games finished, my favorite tabloid Mainichi Shimbun has settled back into its daily rhythm of revealing sights you won't find in the East Pacific. Who celebrates the 30th anniversary of Hello Kitty? The same people who make diamond-studded, platinum figurines in her likeness. Not your thing? Try her in a kimono (three colors!). Surfers, racecars, volcanoes, Cold War-era hide-and-seek, Typhoon Number 16-felled trees and an Olympian tail-end are all rolled together in this week's Japanese garnet.

FROM THOSE WHO WOULD KNOW: I sift through the Mainichi like any amateur with a smattering of knowledge of Japan and its culture. Craig Brett, on the other hand, was there.

The Mainichi Shimbun is still enthralled with Japanese Olympian exploits, so we go to Yahoo! News Stories for a little Honshu peek-a-boo. While Americans enjoy harvest festivals, the Japanese tuck in for folk rituals of their own; this week's do-si-do with the Pacific's colorful — and scantily clad — democratic darling.

World events tend to overshadow the Japanese penchant for photogenic eccentrity, so in the wake of leftists' self-pitying protests on the 59th Anniversary of Hiroshima and this week's Olympic Games in Athens, the Mainichi Shimbun's portraits of Japanese life have been interesting but not compelling enough for the purposes of "Only in Japan." I've learned that the Mainichi draws from pool photography sources like Yahoo! News for its Photojournal feature, and while I prefer to leave subject matter selection to those who ought to know best, a three-week fast is long enough. Using the search string "Tokyo," I stumbled on not one but two photographs in all of fifteen seconds.

So, doubled up, we're nearly back to a weekly dose. A child's ten-minute gape at a sea creature that, if not restricted by time and place, would be pleased to devour them is indeed universal; as is the need to kill house vermin without directly confronting the methods employed, including earnest attempts at anthropomorphism. It's not the Mainichi but it's Japan, and that's exactly where we wanted to be.

Vendors usually needn't worry about auto show-goers leaving the exhibition hall without a clutch of pamphlets under their arm. But with dozens of cars from several competitors, who says the automobile literature will actually be read and the trimline kept in mind? Mazda Motors Corporation intended their house footprint-sized book for the company's photo gallery in Tokyo. But with a colossus like that sitting next to the year's concept car, who's going to forget? That is, until every carmaker follows suit, at which point vendors can be certain that no one will be going home with the books under an arm. Bears, sumo and Japanese women filling two-piece bathing suits just as well as a Yankee girl could in this week's round trip to the place where dreams, strange dreams, are made reality.

Japanese dairymen pour ice cream onto parts the glue factory didn't keep. Hilarity ensues. Ladies and gentlemen, the finest gourmet ice cream the islands have to offer. Be sure to keep your palate clean.