Pick up Japan from METAVERSE.JP

I found this entry on metaverse.jp recently. It's just the kind of product I like.



I wears simply, and dishes out the smokes to you and your friends. They come with options for smoke color and such that you choose when you pick them. This is always a good strategy when making items. Rather than packaging a half-dozen different versions together or trying to sell the different versions as their own products, you have a lot of small options that let people in a group all choose to be the same or different at a whim.



The build itself looks nice. The cigarette casts a red glow onto your face, if you have local lighting enabled, and the smoke uses a particle that scales faster one direction that the other as it floats away, making the smoke seem to drift. All-in-all it's not bad, especially considering you can share it with friends.  

Of the things I like most about Second Life, the small impossible quirks always give me a smile. In a lot of ways life in Second Life imitates life outside. Sure, people carry swords and dress up as characters from their favorite science-fiction show or fashion magazine, but for the most part people generally live in houses, and look like people.

So it's often the domain of small details to illustrate the surreal nature of Second Life.
Like wild, outlandish home decor.

It's a product by *S. It cannot exist in the real world, and a plastic facsimile of it would look lifeless and ordinary. But in Second Life, the home garden is a menagerie of outlandish wonder and this is a great addition.



I also love the "drawn in the air" quality about plants like this. In Second Life, too much surreality can break the immersion and make it feel like a picture on a screen instead of a space to explore, but little details like this let you make it someplace interesting but familiar.

Stoic Ixchel  

One of the great things about watching the metaverse.jp portal is that you can still see the small shops that are out in the world. With classification and search exploits, changes, and quirks, it is hard to find random content in Second Life. Given the desire everyone has to restrict their land, and the sheer volume of space now in use, it is difficult to wander in person even!

So it's nice to be able to look at the feed and see anyone who has put up an advertisement.

I went to *koek* when I saw this slmame post on the feed.



I love seeing what people create when they know how to use the building tools, but have not tried to gear a bigger store for mass-appeal. There are cookie-headphones, a skybox based on what I have to assume is a Japanese music video, and a set of video-game console themed furniture!



It's ironic that as the platform becomes more developed, it's harder to find the small shops, but the portal aggregation makes it possible still.   

I saw the new product from this guy come across Metaverse.jp and zipped off to his shop pretty quick.

One of the great things about Second Life is that you can find just about any style of furnishings or clothing you want. In an earlier post, I talked about great organics and woodland-themed items I found for sale. KDC Style focuses on the other end of that slider. I've always been a big fan of monochrome accented with natural colors. Ultra-modern and minimalist, it mixes western corporate and Japanese traditional in a lot of the pieces. KDC uses oblongs to keep the prim count low, which is always appreciated.



You could really outfit a slick skybox here.

Second Life is crazy that way. I know a girl who spend about a year on Second Life decorating skyboxes. As soon as she'd finish one, she'd put up a new one and start over. Luckily for people like her, there are hundreds of styles to choose from.

Choosing KDC Style is a pretty decent choice. We'll see how long I last before I change my place up again to resemble the inside of a candy factory or something!