I was happy to see that top shelf pictured at the Junkudo book store in Ikebukuro, bringing together that great little collection of Japanese pop culture books from Kodansha International. I remember that when Arcade Mania came out, because we were the first, it was actually challenging for bookstores to place the book, as it wasn’t obvious where it should go. But with the addition of all those other books that ended up using the same format — Matt Alt and Hiroko Yoda’s Yokai Attack and Ninja Attack, Brian’s Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential, and Patrick W. Galbraith’s The Otaku Encyclopedia — it now makes sense to display them together. I think the next step is the creation of a box set — how great a Christmas gift would that be!

I just posted something about the new book Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential on SNOW Magazine, but wanted to mention it here too. It’s Brian Ashcraft’s follow-up to Arcade Mania, to which I contributed, and I can assure you that fans of AM will absolutely love Confidential too. It’s done in the same style and was edited by Andrew Lee, who had a hand in all of the recent “pop culture” guides from Kodansha International, including AM, The Otaku Encyclopedia, and Matt Alt‘s Yokai Attack and Ninja Attack.

The book is now out everywhere — here are links to Amazon US and Amazon Japan. Oh, and the contributor of the book, Shoko Ueda? That’s Brian’s wife who, you know, was an actual schoolgirl, so you know it’s legit.

Incubot, a new toy company started by Matt Alt and Alen Yen, has released its first soft vinyl figure in the form of the Nekosaur. The figure was designed by Yen, sculpted by Kiyoshi Ikeda (Gargamel), and directed by Alt, and is the company’s homage to classic Japanese vinyl robot toys. The Nekosaur will be available for purchase first at this weekend’s SuperFestival 51 (January 10), and will then be available for order through the Incubot website.

In addition to the “crystal model” (pictured), a hand-painted custom version by Matt Walker will also be available for purchase.

Over at CNNGo, Matt Alt presents a timeline of anime over the last decade, tracing the highs and lows the industry has known over the past 10 years.

Matt Alt and Alen Yen have teamed up to form Incubot Productions, a company that plans to release retro robot collectibles. First up are the Nekobot USB robots (pictured above), with a 2GB capacity, and now on sale through their site.

Spotted by Matt Alt in Akihabara: a sign for a bar, using a very recognizable casing.

Very nice to see Matt Alt and his wife Hiroko appear on the cover of this week’s issue of Metropolis, as part of a feature on small business owners — you can read the piece online here.

Chances are you’ve already noticed the tweets and a few posts last week, but yes, I was very happy to see the new CNNGo site go in public beta mode last week. Although it may come off at first as just a new travel portal, the audience for the site are really the expats, the people already living in those cities looking to get more out of them. Of course, anyone passing through will also get a lot out of the site, it just means that the content doesn’t tend to be overly touristy.

The site is currently Asia-only, covering the following cities: Bangkok, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Shanghai, Singapore, and of course, Tokyo. That last one is edited by one W. David Marx, and a look at the list of contributors will immediately reveal a lot of names regular readers of this site will surely recognize (Matt Alt, Patrick Macias, and many more). I’ve contributed as well — one of my pieces is on my fave burgers in town — and look forward to writing more for the site.