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A seemingly insignificant press release from a Japanese company we’ve never even heard of has suddenly set tongues wagging about everyone’s favorite rumor – the fabled 3G iPhone.

The myth that Japanese mobile phones are the best in the world is typically perpetuated by overseas observers obsessed with the cutting-edge services on offer there and confusing those with what are typically very dull handsets.

RFID and holograms are two of our favorite technologies, so it’s a joy to see them form a double act and get together in one pretty little security device. The result is the world’s first hologram-toting IC tag, which arrives in Japan next month courtesy of Hitachi and the printing experts at Toppan.

Big tech companies like NTT DoCoMo come up with dozens of unusual applications for their gear every year, but most tend to end up consigned to glossy brochures that describe some anodyne ‘perfect’ future. One bizzaro contraption that is apparently out in the wild is Big D’s FOMA-based Videophone Alcohol Check System - as the above photo shows, it’s in use on at least one truck round these parts.

Regular readers will have noticed a fair sprinkling of the odd term ‘1-seg’ in news items over the last year or so, with all referring to Japanese products in some way. From Sony’s PSP and video Walkman to car sat-nav systems and mobile phones, this strangely named digital TV standard is popping up everywhere in the Far East, but what exactly is it?

We’ve already digested everything there is to know about Android, the Google-led open operating system for mobile phones and a little about LiMo, the other open-source challenger, but we’ll bet you didn’t know there are two spanking new LiMo phones on the market.

After years of waiting, DoCoMo has finally made good on its promise to deliver an office security system based on the RFID chips in its cellphones.

Hey ladies – are our normal, well-specced phones too much for your pretty little heads? Thought so – you should try our new handsets made just for you. They’re rubbish, but y’know – they’re sparkly.

The latest research on the mobile phone habits of Japanese children may be music to the ears of phone providers, but the depth to which the gadgets have penetrated the lives of the young there is bound to set alarm bells ringing elsewhere.

Anyone remember the days before Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when we actually used those little dark plastic infrared windows on our phones and other gadgets? If you do you’ll also recall that IR transfers were horribly slow and prone to failure, so it’s intriguing to hear that a Japanese firm has upgraded the invisible light technology to make it fit for the modern wireless age.

The Open Handset Alliance‘s Android may not exactly be the platform we all anticipated, but the flood of developers we’ve already seen working on it suggests it won’t be long before some half-decent hardware running the open-source Google-spawn emerges.

We’ve seen a few bone-conduction devices before, including a cellphone, a sports headband and an industrial safety helmet, but this is definitely the first we’ve come across that sends the good vibes by Bluetooth.

Next time you throw an old cellphone away, spare a thought for the engineers at Hokuto System in Japan, who have recycled their old handsets to make fully functional computers.

A story like this just cries out for a headline about Mickey Mouse phone companies, but we won’t go down that road – instead we’ll point out that Disney’s new cellphone venture is bound to go down a treat when it launches in Japan next year.

After Monday’s announcement by Google and the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) of their Linux-based Android platform for mobile phones there are more questions than answers about exactly what it means for the end user.

The latest piece of disaster recovery equipment to come out of Japan is an ingenious feat of engineering featuring one of the most unusual applications of solar technology that we’ve seen.

I don’t know if I’m noticing it because I work in the field, but the last year or so seems to have seen an inordinate amount of coverage by the Western media of Japanese cellphones like the new 905i series from DoCoMo that was unveiled here in Tokyo yesterday.

Sony’s a strange company - on the one hand it appears every inch the industry giant striving to return to its former glory yet, on the other, it produces really bizarre products like its latest piece of software that uses Wi-Fi to locate noodle restaurants.

Despite China’s promise to have a 3G phone network in place by the time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a bluster-filled announcement made yesterday only served to underline that commercial services will not be ready in time.

That fine organ the Mainichi Daily News has word on a cellphone Java application intended to help women discretely ward off the wandering hands (and, presumably, other parts) of the gropers that plague Japan’s trains.

Amid the endless lists of numbers and claims of bigger, better faster technologies, it’s always a joy to receive concrete details of how these so-called improvements might one day really make a difference.

Glasses and contact lenses are noticeably big business all over Asia, so it’s no surprise to see a Japanese optician combining sales of spectacles with the venerable mobile phone.

Japan’s second most popular cellphone provider, KDDI, chose today in Tokyo to unveil the winter handset line-up due to hit its au-branded shops in the next few weeks.

After a lot of recent news about methanol-powered fuel cells and speculation over when they might actually become available, a Korean firm has surprised everyone by producing a device that runs on water.

Next time you’re stuck in a 2 or 3G phone black spot and cursing your choice of mobile network spare a thought for the balding bureaucrats of Japan who are struggling to create a framework [Subscription link] for something called cognitive radio as they plan for 4G in the near future.

Multicore CPUs are already ten-a-penny, but who woulda thunk they’d soon be appearing in cellphones, cars and HD TV players and that they could hold the key to eliminating computer viruses?

Those funky little RFID chips embedded in almost all new Japanese phones just learned another trick to add to a growing repertoire that already includes e-cash, train and bus tickets and e-credit cards, with the introduction of a handy new technology from Mitsubishi.

This time next year, US cellphone users could be following in the footsteps of residents of Japan by ending up on the receiving end of personalized advertising delivered direct to their handsets.

Cellphones have been blamed for a multitude of ills from unbearable train rides to brain tumors, but none can be as surprising as the Japanese government’s discovery that they are changing the way its citizens view their own complex writing system.

It’s not often that a wireless technology from the 1980s makes the headlines, but that’s exactly what’s happening to the hardware behind Japan’s first-ever cellphone network.

Thanko is one of those small Japanese electronics companies that comes up with the goods time after time and always at a price that makes even frivolous gadgets seem sensible. The latest piece of Thanko kit is surprisingly sensible, however, being a wireless audio-visual streamer.

The Japanese cellphone market is pretty much a closed-membership club, in which most phones are sold by the networks and can never be unlocked - in other words, if the phone you want isn’t available from the carrier you choose, then you’re out of luck. Forget even thinking about importing something cool from abroad too.

Some of us dinosaurs may just remember a few early mobile phones that were capable on running on regular batteries – they were mostly very low-spec handsets with rechargeable cells that could be swapped out in a pinch for a few minutes of talk time at most.

We see a lot of prototype and concept devices here but few are as obviously pointless as the Pixi, an add-on for mobile phones devised by Panasonic of Japan working with two British design companies.

When it comes to global cellphone sales it’s no secret – but it is an eternal surprise – that Japanese handset makers have long been miserable flops.

When we reported last year on the rapid spread in Japan of novels designed to be read on cellphones we could hardly have guessed that they would be outselling print publications within a few months, but that’s exactly what has happened in the first half of 2007.

Unless you’ve been – in internet terms at least – hiding under a rock the last few months, you’ll be well aware of the amazing growth of Facebook, the social-networking site (SNS) that reaches people who never thought they’d fall for an SNS.

As Google continues its bid for domination of the internet, particularly in the expanding mobile arena, we hear word from Japan of the US company offering a customized version of its Gmail email service to phone users there.

As if Apple’s iPhone didn’t already have enough geek appeal, a Japanese company has announced a deal to bring manga comics to the tedious wonderphone later this year.

Biometric security techniques, such as face or iris recognition, are not particularly new, but have tended to be limited to official business or novelty products until now. That seems sure to change with the commercial debut this month of a mobile phone lock from Oki Japan that is opened simply by looking at it.