Walking though Harajuku I was greeted by this visage staring down at me from a clothing store. Dark glasses, goatee, frilly shirt, bad jewellery… looks like a role player.

Actually, it reminds me of number role players I know in Sydney. And they probably just left a vampire freeform.

Is that a manga character I see before me?

Or a new movie super hero?

No, it is Symantec Man.

Just beside Shinjuku station, outside Lumine Est, last night I noticed a giant inflatable figure. Wondering what new manga, or perhaps a new super hero movie, this figure was here to advertise I walked closer.

With a little disappointment, and some mirth, I read the sign behind its feet. Seems Shinjuku. The giant figure here to protect, or possibly enslave, Tokyo was Symantec Man.

Looking closely at the sign behind the leg you will see that this is Norton for Symantec.

Yes, you read that correctly. I downloaded the Xcode 3.0 disk image at an average of 3000 KB per second. So the 1.1 GB file took less than 6 minutes.

Ah the joys of having an optical link.

Now if only most sites could deal with the speed.

Yesterday there were a few things that happened that I though were a little ironic in the way they were prioritised.

I went to a Denny’s in Shinjuku last night. Like many establishments in Japan, Denny’s doesn’t require you to sign the bill when paying via credit card. The irony of the situation though is that they wanted me to sign the discount voucher that I was using in the space provided.

So they needed to get a signature to use the 500¥ ($5) loyalty card, but they didn’t seem to need a signature for the 2000¥ ($20) credit card slip.

Saw a Nissen blimp moving round over Shinjuku the other night. It was was hovering over the station and had to rise quickly to get over the Takashimya building.

Interestingly I haven’t previously noticed any blimps over Tokyo. I have heard the occasional Chinook helicopter, but no blimps.

Maybe they are just too quiet to attract more notice, competing with the bustle of Tokyo life.