“Singing in your car” takes an activity that we all do (often to the annoyance of fellow passengers) and turns it into an interactive TV and online contest. You can send in your auditions (posted to YouTube) and some of the best (what is the criteria?!) get featured in the TV CM! Susan Boyle eat your heart out!

The first group of auditions has already been selected and their entries are up for all to see. The second wave of entries, where drivers and passengers sing “Easy Rider” (by Tamio Okuno) for a TV CM/music video, will be closing soon. On December 1 one of the auditions will be awarded a prize of “ten years’ vacation”. This means that, given the government-estimated average that Japanese people go on domestic trips 2.77 times a year and it costs 30,390 yen each time, the winner gets 842,000 yen ($9,500). Not bad.

The TV CM and music video will start broadcasting from mid-December, with a special 60 second TV ad on December 20 featuring all the auditions and entries so far. Finally, another winner from an additional round of auditions will be announced in January, the award being again the super “ten years’ vacation” cash.

Wait a minute. Why Sony? Why cars? Well, Sony is promoting the na-vu, a vehicle navigation system.

The na-vu has all the usual map and GPS functions, plus live updates on traffic and congestion. Design is important too; it comes in three sizes and many colors (including pink!). But perhaps most interestingly, it is a mobile navigation system: it can be taken in and out of the vehicle, and has pedestrian and cyclist modes to guide you when you are on the move (but not in a car). Further, the wansegu (ワンセグ) digital TV functionality means that your vehicle becomes your living room (or it doubles-up as a portable TV), and you can play music and videos, and even send recorded data from your Sony Blue Ray to watch on the na-vu.

In case you can’t tell, the rest of the final sentence should say “a knife”. Get ready world.

The previous mugen offerings have been incredibly popular, both as a novelty and stress reliever of sorts, but this one’s interesting in that it’s being explicitly targeted at men and women in their 30’s and 40’s. Yes world, cut toy demographics go all over the place.

There was even a micro discussion on Fox News Sunday where the panelists (pro-State hacks from both political parties) actually criticized the president for bowing because (and I’m paraphrasing) “American presidents just don’t bow to foreign leaders”.

Do American presidents shake people’s hands, or are they not supposed to show any kind of friendliness? How arrogant is it to assume that shaking hands is the default “normal” way to greet people around the world? I have meetings and human interactions every day where I don’t touch a single person, but bow to plenty (not a deep one, mind you), and it’s not because I’m supplicating myself. That’s just how it’s done around here…you know…in JAPAN where Obama came to visit. I would hope that he’d at least make an attempt to bow to everyone he met, not just the emperor.

If Obama went to France and kissed the cheek of Sarkozy, would Obama be accused of coming on to him?

Am I wrong here?

UPDATE: I actually thought I was a bit late in writing this post, but the fervor continues! There are actually people who are “outraged” at Obama bowing to a Japanese person. These critics better not ever come to Japan, lest they witness the embarrassing spectacle of tens of thousands of Americans living here and bowing to their clearly inferior underclass of conquered Japanese on a daily basis!

Money quotes:

Bill Bennett: “It’s ugly. I don’t want to see it. We don’t defer to emperors. We don’t defer to kings or emperors.”

Gosh Bill, even powerless ones?

Bill Kristol: “I’ll bet if you look at pictures of world leaders over 20 years meeting the emperor in Japan, they don’t bow.”

Maybe not to the emperor, but I seem to recall the first president Bush bowing pretty deeply into the prime minister’s lap back in 1992 though!

In this photo, Dick Cheney can’t even summon the courage to look the emperor in the eye, let alone bow to him, and opts for checking out his package.

On top of the usual user comments scrolling across the screen, you will soon notice the damage caused by the reckless driver: grass spraying to the left, the screen “windshield glass” smashing, the text boxes collapsing…

It is interesting to note here how an American video game company is using a highly Japanese media to interact with local users in an original way. NicoNico Douga continues to be one of the most creative online forums around: we’ve previously reported on the Excell spreadsheet animation that caused a storm.

However, this is not completely new, nor is it limited just to Nico Nico Douga. Just last year there was the Warioland Shake-It YouTube video that literally seemed to destroy the window you were watching the video in…