June 17

Tags

Smile Fight

Posted by on June 17, 2012 in Awesome Stuff To Do | 4 Comments

My friend Colleen grins ear to ear as she hammers that baby to the mat

As a lifelong 98-pound weakling, team captains had good reason to choose me last when it came to athletic contests, but at the Sony ExploraScience museum, I finally found my sport: Smile Fighting!

Yes, they have a piece of technological wizardry that actually analyzes your beaming face and gives you a score! After extensive experimentation, my friend and I concluded that showing your pearly whites was key, as was eye crinkliness and grin wideness.

You can play against a real live friend or a random photo chosen by the computer. Both of you smile into the camera, then the rating begins. Shown as both a number and a graph, it’s obvious who gets the trophy, because the loser’s photo topples backward in defeat!

Every day, all the smile warriors’ photos are ranked against each other and displayed on a screen as you leave the museum. I made the mistake of going with a friend who’s a champion smiler, so she edged me out, but I’m totally going into training! Next time, it’s make the top row or die smiling.

If you’d like to visit the Sony Explorascience Museum and whup your nearest and dearest in a smile fight, directions are on my website, The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had.

•

Jonelle Patrick is the author of the Only In Tokyo mystery series, now out for the first time in paperback

More Nightshade book goodness here, in case you think you might want to, you know, read it or something

A young woman is found dead in an abandoned car, with a pair of strangers old enough to be her parents. Their suicide note apologizes for a disaster that hasn’t yet happened. And someone is stalking the…read more

…or watch the book trailer (0:52)