When my no-frills Japanese-design-wonk friends at MUJI asked me to check out their ice ball maker, I happily obliged. I had spent many an afternoon getting lost in MUJI’s bleak, minimalist stores in Osaka and Tokyo when I was in college and romping around Japan. I brought back, in addition to plenty of sake (this was very much pre-the 3 ounces-or-less shenanigans of the modern flying era), tons of MUJI goodies.

Their foray in to the US has been mostly located in New York, a few outposts within the city as well as a ‘to-go’ shop at JFK. With the help of MoMA and its’ illustrious holiday catalogs, the Japanese design firm is gaining traction stateside.

And, yes, they sent me a silicon ice ball maker. The ice ball maker replicates those big honking balls of ice so oft found in a Japanese cocktail. It’s pretty, and it’s functional: one large bolus of ice has a bigger surface area in contact with the drink and thus cools the drink quickly, but since it’s so big, it doesn’t melt as quickly, so less water in your drink. All in all, a pretty smart idea. A friend noted that a bunch of them in a punchbowl could make a powerful impression—like punch lava over rocks of ice. At nearly $12 for one, that might be cost prohibitive for most of us, and this is basically a novelty—one needn’t freeze their water in a silicon heap to create adequate coolant for their refreshments.

The folks from MUJI also sent me two other cute tchotchkes which I actually am enjoying even more—a date book that splits the day in to an AM page and an PM page. It’s a little small and my ink is bleeding through, but I like it so far. But it’s super delicate. One trip to lunch and it looked like it had been through combat.

And, lastly, the splurge: a building block toy set of the New York skyline. It is entirely useless, and I love it. Favorite piece: a wooden Guggenheim. Obviously, our fake New York has, at least, high culture. I’d been eying this for a while, but it’s not the kind of thing you ever want to tell someone you bought, namely for yourself, a young professional, living paycheck to paycheck to make it to that Andrew Bird concert. But, hey, if someone else is going to drop it in my lap, I’m free to say, it’s rockin’. I put it in my office, which has become, much like my last one in Chicago did, a collection of bric-a-brac. Tchotchkes and trinkets collected from a life in transit.

**UPDATE 1/17/10: Some have inquired how and where to get such novelties, if they are for sale. The good news is the folks at Japanese-based MUJI have now got a pretty stellar site to buy stuff within the US (ships from their NYC store), but the Silicon Ice Ball Maker has been backordered since the holidays.