Day Two / Japanese Science & Internet Umbrellas

Ohayou! This is the outfit I wore yesterday for exploring some more of beautiful Tokyo! If you're ever going to Japan, you must make sure to check out Kichijoji. I spent the afternoon wandering the gorgeous Sun Road shopping street (see photos below). wearing sweater - Harajuku (and I forgot the name of the store) necklace - c/o Merrin & Gussy coat - my mum's coat tights - Ebay socks - Vintage bag - Rubi Shoes skirt - Ice shoes - Asos I forgot to take photos of everything cool I saw yesterday, because I was too excited by it all... haha :) however here is a shot of one of my favourite chain stores in Japan - Momo by Wonder Rocket. (There's about 3 of these in Harajuku on Takeshita street alone. They have the cutest stuff.) Oh and hey! I'm not going to forget my science posts either while I'm abroad! Here's a little Tokyo-themed science story. My next few science posts are going to be Japan-themed, quite fittingly! The photo you see above (from this news story) is an "internet umbrella" called Pileus, which displays a Flickr stream and google maps underneath the canopy. It can even play Youtube videos. Created in 2007 by two Japanese graduate students at a research and design laboratory, it's a cute use of technology and science with the aim of "making rainy days more fun". While displaying social media and the like on one's umbrella will probably not catch on - and I can also imagine it would cause a lot of people to bump into each other - it is a step towards the world of augmented reality (which many science commentators have declared is going to take off in 2013). Augmented reality is the science of having the world around you "augmented" or "enhanced" with things that aren't actually there. An example of augmented reality is like being able to look at a restaurant through special glasses, or through your iphone camera, and having it tell you the number of people inside and if any of your friends from facebook are currently eating there (seriously, look up augmented reality, it's awesome). In fact, google have already begun developing augmented reality glasses. I hope that you're all very, very well! More from me soon,