Gizmine

I'm a tiny bit late on this one, but I just found out about Gizmine, an online store full of Japanese gadgets. Now, it's not that hard to find novelty Japanese thingies today at all, especially in New York. But wanting a specific item – rather than just browsing aisles and aisles of cuteness – has always been a little tricky. My most recent headache came from trying to get one of these beautiful humidifiers from Middle. Well, Gizmine has it. Now I can find almost any cute, colorful gadgety thing I can think of, and not have to convert from ¥ or pay a fortune in shipping.


There's some other interesting stuff about the site too, aside from its products. I've seen many "flash /html" links on sites before, but never this:


Now, I guess sometimes I'm a real twit when it comes to the web, but why would anybody want to turn Ajax off? An older browser?

This is on every single product page, tapping into a "Hey, look at this crazy /awesome /cute thing I found" insight about Japanese innovation:


The store has your average categories, like home/office/bath, price ranges, toys/cameras/games, etc. But there are some awesome ones stuck in there as well. You can sort by color, which seems somehow especially "delightfully Japanese" to me. You can also search by theme, kawaii being one of them (it means "cute," which is an entire culture in and of itself in Japan).


Poke around... you can buy a wooden keyboard. A live plant-in-a-bottle cell phone strap. A waterproof, teardrop-shaped speaker for your bathroom. A Swarovski-encrusted mouse. And you can also subscribe to the New Product Feed, which is just plain dangerous.