The Japanese are taking the world of botanical gadgets by storm. Just today I spotted this awesome tiny pet-plant on Japanese gadget site Compact-Impact. Its a mini cactus, in a little plastic vial, designed to be attached to your keychain or your cellphone. Now you can carry foliage around with you wherever you go!
Make sure to read the review of this product on the compact-impact site.. seems compact-impact hasnt shipped the product to one customer in over 2 months?!?!?! caveat emptor I guess… or as the reviewer says… consider your money a donation.. hehe
Living in Japan, and having never seen or heard of this product (as is typical; Many non-japanese people refer to trends in this country which don’t actually exist), I went about searching and I found at this site
http://2-han.net/unit/trasup/
in which it states that this actually came from Korea. Some fans of a certain Korean soap opera (‘dramas’ as they are called, which are somewhat popular here now)saw these in the drama and actually wanted them, some so much that they went to Korea to get there own.
These types of cell phone straps are very popular here, but far from being like this, are usually guady things like little stuffed animals or mini plastic versions of american brand breakfast cereals, etc., usually with 5 or 10 different straps. The site I found by searching in Japanese, indeed, came up with a garish plastic smiling cactus to attatch to cell phones.
But I certainly want one of these! They look awesome.
Hi Grouchie-
I’m sorry if you’ve had trouble with Compact-Impact, but I ordered one of these and it arrived in 2 days. So you might want to just call them if you have a problem.
you can also buy 21 different plants from
http://www.ginsai.de
its a german website but they also ship to other countries. I just wrote an e-mail to them and they handled everything very fast. I have my plants now and I am really happy.
cheers