We've officially seen it all. Everything. We will no longer be surprised and/or amazed by the offspring created when technology and fashion get together, usually after having one too many at the office Christmas party. It happens.

A company called Kuchofuku has created the answer to all of your sweating in the cubicle blues. They have created a shirt with built in air conditioning that is powered by your USB drive. Seriously. No longer will you have to sit and sweat in the office because Ted in accounting, who refuses to retire, feels a chill.

Anyone who knows anything about Aussie songstress Kylie Minogue knows that she is always sure to choose some flamboyant stage wear, most memorably the Moulin Rouge-style costumes she showcased on her last tour, which was appropriately titled Showgirl.

We've talked before about her Spiderman-themed outfit (or pretty sexy designer threads, depending on your opinion) but now she's unveiled pictures of the rest of her tour outfits for the world's press to admire/gape at in astonishment.

Triumph International of Japan have a track record of producing innovative/weird bra concepts such as a bra to promote the use of chopsticks (sounds potentially dangerous!) and a bra which could be turned into a shopping bag (whether as it is being worn or afterwards, we're not clear). So why not create a bra which incorporates some nice green, sustainable solar power? (Apart from the fact that underwear rarely needs a power source, of course...)

A new trend is taking over the streets of Japan, literally. People are running in huge numbers, particularly young women who live in the cities.

The fad is especially strong in trendy Tokyo, where women's corporate marathon clubs are meeting before and after work to do a few laps around the Imperial Palace. The main goal is to "stay healthy, pretty and sane" with the extra benefit of getting to show off special marathon gear from Danskin and New Balance.

Japanese Vogue is sidesteping the recent controversies over too young or too thin models and going straight to animation.

Reuters reports that the June issue will showcase the popular - and fashionable - Hello Kitty wearing items from the fall and winter John Galliano for Dior line.

Our only question is why did it take this long? Hello Kitty is everywhere!

Feeling the heat?

If so, you might want to look into Japanese Kuchou-fuku's air-conditioned clothes. The shirts and jackets keep the wearer cool with two small fans sewn into the back of each garment. The fans are powered by a pocket-sized rechargeable battery pack.

They aren't the most fashionable thing I've seen, even in any of the 10 different styles and a variety of colors, but they do help the environment because they use about 1/50th the energy of a small air conditioner. If you don't mind that you might look like a human blimp, you can get one of these shirts for 11,000 yen ($96).

I recently stumbled across another website about Japanese street fashion and, out of my outrageously long list of bookmarks with the same topic, I must say this is my favorite so far. It's well organized, frequently updated, and there is a refreshingly low number of Gothic lolita outfits.

Although a lot of these ensembles require an absurd amount of boldness and confidence to carry, anyone can take a note or two and learn about experimental layering. Check out the guy in the upper-right photo. He's wearing a smart black jacket over a thin cardigan over an apron -- that's right, an industrial apron -- over a thin t-shirt. It shouldn't work, but somehow, it does. A lot of the pictures also come with some close-ups of accessories, which range from bizarre wristwatches to home-made bags to creative ear piercings. Seeing sites like this always inspire me to ransack my own wardrobe, mixing and matching in new, exciting ways. It makes me feel like I've spent a load of money buying new clothes when, really, all I've done is take what I already own and put it to a different use.

The whole website is in Japanese, but it's fairly easy to navigate. There are updates every week, so this site will never lose its cool.

If you're more interested in the streets of Helsinki than Tokyo, check out Hel-looks.

Just when you thought that guy who stole 1,500 pairs of shoes was weird, now comes news of a Japanese man who stole over 8,000 items of women's clothing. But he wasn't re-selling them, and he wasn't giving them away to any lady friends. As it turns out, Maeyasu Kawamura stole the clothes simply so he could sleep buried in them.

According to police, "He seemed to like the smell." Gross!

All in all, the cops found 2,400 pieces of lingerie, 600 kimonos, 1 wedding dress, and 5,200 items of other clothing all piled up to the ceiling in the man's small apartment in Osaka.

How is it possible to sleep under all that stuff? Would you suffocate? I'm sure I don't own more than a few hundred items of clothing -- if that -- and there's no way I could sleep if all of them were piled on top of my bed. But 8,000? That's just creepy!

A gold bathtub valued at $988,100 was recently stolen from the guest bathroom at the Kominato Hotel Mikazuki in Kamogawa, a city south of Tokyo. The tub, which weighs in at 176 pounds, was mysteriously lifted from a 10th floor room in the hotel.

The bathtub happened to be a well-known amenity of the resort hotel -- guests and visitors were allowed to use the glitz tub for a few hours each day. But despite the ostensibly public access to the tub, the valuable piece was secured only by a chain attached to the bathroom door.

So far, the police have no leads on the case since there were no witnesses or security tapes documenting the theft.

I guess the lesson to be learned is that if you have a million dollar gold bathtub, you really ought to attach it to the floor.

You might love the masterful artistry and gorgeous look of Japanese kimonos, but it's probably not very practical to wear a kimono. I can't imagine that they're all the comfortable, and I do know that they are quite expensive. However, you can still have the look of the hand-dyed fabrics with Kimono Rings.

The Kimono Ring is a piece of Kimono fabric encased in acrylic. The rings reaches just over a half-inch high in the center and is open in the back (to allow for flexible sizing). The rings are $16USD, available from The Carrot Box, which also has some beautiful carves plastic and lucite rings.

Gucci recently opened their latest flagship store in Ginza, Japan. The Italian brand opened their eight-story glass-and-steel store on November 3. The shopping paradise includes four floors of retail space, a cafe and a gallery as well as office space. The store is part of Gucci's revamped style as a less in-your-face more understated brand (sort of a hybrid of the Tom Ford years mixed with a bit of Gucci's Italian luxe roots). For those of us not lucky enough to attend the opening of this palace of shopping opulence, Gucci has created a four-episode podcast available on iTunes for free that gives a good view of both the building and the fancy wares on display. The podcast features snips of the opening event which included a performance by Mary J. Blige and a runway show of Gucci's Spring 2007 collection. Not as good as being there (they gave out free Gucci iPod cases after all) but still fun to watch.

I've always admired the playful, quirky styles that come out of street fashions in Japan. But the latest trend to overtake Japan has me a little confused. What is it? Well, fashionfans, it's a see-thru skirt.

Shocking isn't? Well, it's only slightly less provocative than one might think because, as it turns out, these skirts aren't actually made of translucent fabric. The bum and the undies are just printed on the material. (Phew...) Talk about taking underwear as outerwear to a totally new level!

(Note: This turns out to be an internet hoax. But I bought it long enough to actually write this post, so I thought I'd see if anyone else out there was gullible enough to believe it as well!)