Get the stories!  Or just the comments...

• Home
  • Top
  • Archives
  • Categories
  • Tags
  • Sites We Like
• Contact Us
• Datefinder
• Buy J-Gadgets!
• Snapp! PR
• Advertise

Anyone who spends an unusual amount of time in the bath and is tired of having to strain over the sound of gurgling water to catch one’s tunes of choice on the smallest room’s radio will doubtless be pleased to hear of the latest eye-catching waterproof MP3 player from Noritz Japan.

While much of the Western world struggles with broadband speeds in single digits, Japan’s national telco has just seen users of its 100 Mbit/s fiber-optic internet service become a majority as the slower ADSL is increasingly being left behind.

Companies excessively worried about the filth adhering to the clothes of their employees every time they enter the office now have two choices to remedy the tricky situation. They can either: 1) Pay ¥1.89 million for a huge ‘air shower’ to blast staff clean, or 2) Ignore the problem.

No, it’s not a late April-fool joke – the iPod/alarm clock combination you see above is a real product, announced today in Japan by Logitec, with speakers cunningly disguised as bells.

Anyone living outside the sub-continent or the curry hotspots of the UK will know that it can be hard at times to find a good spot of spice unless you’re in the Midlands Balti Belt, but what are the curry-loving Japanese astronauts aboard the International Space Station to do?

Gadgets designed specifically for babies are never going to be exactly cool but TakaraTomy’s latest early-days gizmo proves that they can be as cutting edge as anything for the grown ups.

As if they didn’t already have enough customers between them, those two 800-pound gorillas, NTT DoCoMo and McDonald’s, are teaming up to bring burgers and bytes to each other’s patrons across Japan.

Anyone who has ever bemoaned the snail’s pace cooking of a typical microwave oven and wished for a quicker way to rustle up that late-night snack might want to start saving now for Sanyo’s hybrid cooker, which speeds things up while saving the Earth at the same time.

The Tokyo Marathon wound its usual way through the streets of Japan’s high-rise-framed capital last weekend with thousands of runners proudly branded with the mark of sponsor Asics. One thing men’s race winner Daniel Njenga probably didn’t know, however, is that Asics recently kicked off a high-tech 3D shoe-fitting system in its Japanese shops.

Visit Japan during springtime and one of the first terms you’re likely to hear is ‘hay fever’ – that’s because it’s a major health hazard here that seriously affects tens of millions of people, many of whom have to take time off work.

Over the years we’ve seen plenty of photo frames that include LCD screens for displaying digital photographs but few have been as cheap or as versatile as the Exemode DPS700 from KFE Japan.

We all know we’re not supposed to leave out car navigation systems actually in the car when it’s parked, lest they become just another crime statistic, which is probably why Clarion Japan has blended its newest sat-nav with a PDA that slips in a pocket.

Japanese glasses superstore Vision Megane (‘Vision Glasses’) sure has some unusual ideas about what people want in a pair of spectacles. Prospective customers at their outlets now have the option of having vibrating alerts installed in their new frames.

Next month in Japan sees the beginning of the endgame in an ambitious scheme to entirely do away with paper tickets across Tokyo’s complex public transport network.

NEC in Japan reckons that the increasing popularity of VoIP internet telephones is about to lead to a surge in nuisance calls from marketeers or worse and so has developed technology to block unsolicited diallers from getting through.

Japanese is a fun language to learn and isn’t really all that hard — it just looks that way sometimes. However, one of the most difficult aspects for beginners is how to look up kanji (Chinese characters) in a dictionary.

Ever wondered about the world’s favorite Oðblgshezi words spelled out upside down on a calculator? So did Casio and to celebrate the Japanese company’s billionth calculator it has published a list of the top ten.

Mitsubishi seems rightly proud of its latest take on the problem of how to deal with all the nasty brown sludge that flows beneath our city streets.

Yes — it’s a bra that becomes a shopping bag. In other words, exactly what the world has been waiting for.

Admittedly, it’s not a blubbery mound of sweat and attitude, but the Sumo Omni beanbag chair looks a helluva a lot more comfortable to sit on than Asashoryu or Baruto.

Visitors to next week’s International Electric Automobile show in Yokohama will get a chance to see Yamaha’s hydrogen fuel-cell powered scooter, the FC-Aqel. The 125cc machine carries two compressed hydrogen tanks and has LED lights.

These things aren’t at all new but Mirrco’s TSA Zipper Lock is certainly the best-looking way to give over-zealous airport security staff free rein with your dirty laundry.

The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tokyo has a great rep for coming out with all manner of useless, but cool, gadgets, which makes its recent unveiling of a prototype “intelligent” wheelchair something of a first.

South Korea’s Infinics promises that its new golf putter — the DiXX Blu Digital Instructor — will improve your short game thanks to a set of sophisticated sensors that measure your stance and swing.

We’ve been taking a ride in Nissan’s new super-safe cars fitted with wireless driver-aid technology to make the roads a lot less dangerous. Check out the vid after the jump to see how we’ll all be driving in 15 years.

The roads southwest of Tokyo could soon be a little safer soon as Nissan will begin trials in October of a new system that alerts drivers to potential dangers on the road ahead by tying together data from the car with a network of roadside sensors and transmitters.

By the end of the year, patients suffering from a painful gastrointestinal (GI) problem will be able to swallow an electronic “pill” that can collect data from their bodies and wirelessly send it to a nearby device.

Taiwan’s textile industry is working more closely with the island’s vaunted IT sector to use technologies such as RFID and solar panels in clothing.

Ever seen Beat Takeshi dressed up as a schoolgirl with a moustache while hosting a hidden-camera TV show featuring tricked-out public toilets that expose folk once they drop their pants?

German chip maker Infineon Technologies will supply chips for new electronic passports that the U.S. will begin issuing in the coming weeks. Of the 15 million e-passports to be issued by the end of the year, several million of them will be equipped with Infineon chips, the manufacturer said.

Do you have an incredibly hot rear end? If so, our heros at Thanko promise to come to the rescue with their bum cooling USB Hinyari (holy) Cushion…

We remember years ago how Sony’s then-president Kunitake Ando would drone on about how it would be wonderful to have a do-it-all, super-duper remote control that would make things easier for everyone. Well, Ando’s been put out to grass, but his idea lives on in Sony’s latest models that are designed to handle your telly plus up to seven other devices.

Asahi, the purveyor of fine Japanese beer famous for its golden unchi (turd-shaped) building is adding a technological twist to the joyful slaking of the great Japanese thirst during a typically torrid summer in Tokyo. Put simply; buy beer and (potentially) win a 1-seg TV Watch from Willcom that doubles as a cellphone.

For the first time in my life, except for that brief flirtation with ISDN in the late ‘90s, I’m about to be without an analog telephone in the house. From next week, mine will be part of a growing number of Japanese homes whose telephone service comes across a broadband Internet connection.

Evergreen has come out with a remote control that can switch off your lights as well as let you fiddle with your PC and TV. Cool.

Have piano, will travel. Hardly rolls off the tongue, does it? Well, say hello to the laser-zapper Vertual [sic] Piano from a company called Digital Information Development, or DID.

The near-universal ability of Japanese people to mangle spoken English persists despite the best efforts of the nation’s storied electronics industry, which habitually churns out increasingly sophisticated electronic dictionaries.

That’s literally. If you’re big into Japanese food, but are still somewhat curious as to how you get the California into the California roll then Shaberu! DS Ryouri Navi — aka the Talking DS Cooking Navigator — may be just what the master chef ordered.

Err, there’s not a lot we can say about this one, save to point out that it’s not that unusual in the wonderland that is Japan for folk to travel around the country with — how can we put this? — a life-size doll with fully working parts.

Don’t believe what you’re seeing or hearing outside your window? South Korea’s Karak Electronics, which ensures the happiness of its customers through “wisdom management,” has come out with a weather station that you can plug into your PC to monitor what’s going on in real time.