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Japan’s legions of small northwest coastal towns are famed for their patchworks of rice paddies and garlands of snow-capped mountains that offer some of the region’s best skiing, but only one is home to a research lab devoted to understanding how we interact with our mobile phones.

Come the end of next month, one of the last refuges of escape from the digital onslaught of the modern world will be cruelly ripped from us, when Panasonic’s new, fully connected car navigation system goes on sale.

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?

Just in time for Christmas we have two new additions to the PlayStation line-up - a glowing red PSP and the redesigned PS2 we’ve been expecting for some months.

Sony Japan has been busy of late on the Walkman front, so it’s no surprise to see yet another new lineup announced in Japan this morning - the 1-seg digital TV toting, credit-card sized NW-A910 series.

If there’s a product as bizarre as the Segnity pocket television from E-Revolution then we’ve yet to see it.

Sony’s Vaio PCs hit their tenth birthday this year and to celebrate the company is releasing anniversary special editions in Japan, with the flagship model being the Vaio VGN-TZ50B.

Since April Fool’s Day this year most of Japan has been able to enjoy digital TV broadcasts created specifically for mobile devices, particularly for cellphones. The new service has been branded “1-seg” for a very good reason.