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From the country that gave us karaoke, the Walkman and the pot noodle comes the next cultural phenomenon to trounce the planet - well, the cooler, urban middle-class parts of it anyway - Pecha Kucha.
If that sounds like the noise old people make when eating sticky rice, you're in the right part of the anatomy. Roughly translating as 'chit-chat', Pecha Kucha celebrates the magnificent human facility for talking.
The formula is simple: creative types stand on a stage in front of a paying audience with nothing but a microphone and some slides, and discuss their ideas. The catch is that they have just six minutes and 40 seconds to do it: that's 20 slides at 20 seconds each.
For the unpracticed, the tongue-tied or the long-winded, this can be a tall order and part of the cruel fun is watching cool, successful people lose it. But when it works, a Pecha Kucha night is the best gig in town: funny, enlightening and almost completely drug-free.
Launched three years ago in the trendy Roppongi bar SuperDeluxe, Pecha Kucha is the brainchild of Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein of Klein Dytham Architecture, who say they wanted a 'casual place' where designers and artists could show their work.
The formula has since spread to Berlin, San Francisco, Shanghai and several other cities. London will host the world's biggest Pecha Kucha event yet today as part of the city's 2006 Architecture Biennale.