Japanese
Strange as it may seem, in the last few years Japan has been home to a fad where cute girls dressed up as french maids star in J-POP, comics, animation, and video games. The distinctive costume has grown so popular that there's a number of so-called maid cafés in Tokyo's geeky Akihabara district where anyone can enjoy the thrills of being served by a horde of hostesses in full outfit. That – to say nothing of Japan's endless fascination with humanoid robots – probably explains Pre-made Me, the latest creation by well-known Japanese roboticist Dr. GIY. Read More
Beginning on September 1st at the Mitsuoka Motors showroom in Osaka, car enthusiasts will be able to rent the company's supercar, the Orochi, for 33,000 yen per day (or about US$390). While Mitsuoka is not an especially well-known name in the motor industry, the company is making a splash among gearheads looking for a slick car that will make heads turn. Read More
Japanese company PhotoFast Co.,Ltd. is set to release the iPADock at the end of September, and if these first pictures (released this week) are any indication, it's quite possibly the most bad-ass iPad/iPhone charging dock we've seen to date. This docking station can accommodate various combinations of devices – you can connect two iPads at once, four iPhones at once, or you can mix it up with one iPad and two iPhones. You can also use iPADock to charge up your iPods, as it's compatible with the Touch, Nano, and Classic models as well. Read More
The Orochi sports car first appeared as a concept vehicle based on the Honda NSX platform at the Tokyo Motor Show in 2001 before undergoing some updates and revisions and finally being put into production and offered for sale in late 2006. The company now unveiled the Orochi Gold Premium model. Read More
A couple of times a year, Japan's Triumph International unveils a themed undergarment based on a current trend or issue. Bringing women closer to agriculture is the company's latest inspiration for crazy conceptual underwear, which takes form in the shape of the Rice Bra. Read More
How the heck does it do that? Japanese telecom giant NTT DoCoMo has used the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to demo a very cool new handsfree interface you can use to control an MP3 player using gestures you make with your eyeballs. Sensors in the earbuds themselves measure changes in electrical potential to convert your eye movements to iPod commands. Fascinating stuff... and while using it on an MP3 player might seem a bit naff, there's probably a range of other situations where handsfree, voice-free control options like this could be really useful. Read More
iPhone app 'Pollen Radar' gives you the pollen forecast
Japanese company Up-Frontier has developed an iPhone application that will provide a pollen forecast for individuals prone to allergies and hay fever. Through working with the Japan Weather Association and their Weather API, the application can access the latest pollen count on their iPhone. Read More
Wearable wireless health sensor for remote bio-monitoring
With it's rapidly aging population, few countries stand to gain as much from developments in the remote monitoring of bio-signals as Japan. As a culture that reveres the elderly it's likely that the Japanese will be one of the countries leading the charge in the growing field of bio-signal telemetry. Just one example is the HRS-I, or the human recorder system, that gathers health-related information and transmits it wirelessly to a mobile phone or PC. Read More
Now here's one out of left field. Despite the massive development costs of hundreds of new models by dozens of motorcycle manufacturers, and numerous landmark motorcycle launches of 2009, Suzuki's middleweight Gladius 650 has gained the most prestigious award of the Japanese market, taking the honours in the motorcycle category of the famous 'Good Design Awards'. Launched in the spring of 2009, the Gladius features a trellis-styled steel frame and a unique style but unlike most motorcycle award winners (generally assessed by sports oriented motorcycle journalists with added testosterone), it's not a bike designed for the racetrack – it is an entry-level machine aimed at people who want an all-round machine for economical and enjoyable road usage. Read More
PARO is an animatronic baby seal companion robot designed by some very clever people with one simple purpose in mind - to make you love him. From everything we've seen, he's exceptionally talented at his job, melting the hardest hearts and bringing a big silly smile to everyone who meets him. But although he might be a wonderful toy, PARO's real purpose is to address a serious problem that's affecting Japan right now, and will soon spread across much of the Western world. Read More
