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Anyone with even a passing interest in modern Japan will have heard of Tokyo’s Akihabara district, most likely through squealing newspaper or blog stories detailing just how weird and depraved the one-time electronics Mecca is…

This week’s Digital Content Expo at Miraikan is one of the less corporate tech shows on the Tokyo calendar, so it’s no surprise to see some pretty kooky engineering like the Funbrella from a grad-student team at Osaka University.

Banana gadgets, super-soapy shower slippers and ingenious uses for empty drinks bottles are among the zillions of products you didn’t know you needed, but now can’t live without, that are on display at this week’s International Gift Show in Tokyo.

One of the pleasures of film festivals, whether you’re watching them or organizing them, is in discovering unintended themes in the films.

We’ve all heard about Sony’s strategy meeting in Tokyo yesterday (read my report here, if you’re bored), but even more interesting than the news that everything’s going to be connected in Sony’s Brave New World and movies will be streaming left and right were a couple of demo videos unleashed on the underwhelmed journos assembled at the event.

One of the more low-key exhibits at the Display 2008 show in Tokyo was a new kind of e-paper that promises an electronic experience far closer to real paper than anything we’ve seen before.

Aside from flashy 3D displays, the other big draw for fans of future tech at Display 2008 in April was electronic paper in at least 57 flavor-packed varieties.

Flat-panel displays are so mainstream these days they have an entire massive exhibition dedicated to them – the Display Expo in Tokyo. That’s where the technologies we’re likely to see in the shops over the next few years get an early airing, and we were there last month.

Ever wondered what we’ll all be reading on the hover bus in The Future?

It’s kinda late notice (understatement and a half, eh?), but our pals at Orbital Manga in London have an in-store event today to mark the launch of Demon Prince: Children of Gaia from Dimensional Manga.

Emily at Orbital Manga in London dropped us a line with word of a cool-sounding event there next month.

Blog-happy Tokyo residents might want to make a note of a fun event taking place in early December at which they could walk off with not just a Sanyo Xacti camcorder for free, but also plenty of insight from a living, breathing Japanese video-blogging legend.

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.

As we mentioned last week, Samsung has a few surprises in store at this week’s Flat Panel Display International show in Japan and has been drip-feeding them to the press ahead of the show’s opening on Wednesday.

Head to the Flat Panel Display International show in Yokohama, Japan, next week and you’ll get an eyeful of three new LCDs from Samsung that will probably start showing up in laptops sometime next year.

With the end of CEATEC 2007 looming, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the strongest theme of this year’s show and the implications for what we’ll be finding in our electronics shops over the next months and years.

Another day at CEATEC, another amazing piece of technology; this time in the realm of higher-than-high-definition video. JVC’s stand at the Japanese electronics show is dominated by a boxy-looking camera that can shoot video at four times the resolution of standard HD TV.

We’ve seen plenty of next-generation flat televisions at this week’s CEATEC show in Japan, but a technology we haven’t heard of in a while is the field emission display, or FED.

To pimp the Japanese HD DVD release of all 1,450 minutes of the original Star Trek in 1080p glory, the HD DVD promo body has decked out its booth attendants in appropriate regalia at CEATEC this week.

Apple’s Multi-touch technology, as seen in the iPhone and iPod touch, are pretty good, but don’t you think they’re just a little bit, well, yesterday? If you don’t already, you will when you see what Sharp has in store.

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.

Toshiba has been showing off its new, powerful SpursEngine processor at the CEATEC 2007 electronics show just outside Tokyo and we were there to take a look.

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.

What looks like the latest attempt by Sony to knock the iPod off its throne appears to have kicked off in Japan this morning with the launch of a new website called Rolly World.

The Wireless Japan exhibition near Tokyo this week has seen plenty of demonstrations of existing and future technologies, but there’s one that we’re still not sure how to categorize – fuel cells.

DWT friend and all-round good-egg Roland Kelts has a new book out about the bizarre and intriguing bonds between the cultures of Japan and the US. Japanamerica touches on everything from manga to maniacs, so get your click on and hear what Roland has to say for himself after the jump. PS If you’re in Tokyo, don’t miss the chance to get it straight from the horse’s mouth tomorrow night - details at the end.

So, the fabled 80GB PS3 has just launched in Korea and gamers worldwide are united in grumbling about how it ain’t fair they only got 60GB, well so what?

We all know Sony for its games hardware, TVs, cameras and other audio-visual products, but it’s not such common knowledge that the company has a bleeding-edge research laboratory dedicated to exploring the technology of tomorrow just for the heck of it.

European readers with an eye for design and a free afternoon might like to know about the latest Sony Design event being held in Milan, Italy, this week that combines technology with old-fashioned Italian craftsmanship.

Toshiba’s ass-kicking RD-A1 HD DVD recorder with a 1TB hard drive went on sale this morning, after a delay of a few weeks natch, for the wallet-kicking sum of ¥398,000, or about US$3,400.