On June 15, electronics giant Matsushita Electric (Panasonic’s parent company) unveiled a wearable robot suit called Power Pedal, which attaches to the lower body and provides users with up to seven times more leg strength.
Once strapped in, the user applies pressure to a pair of sensor-equipped pedals to control the suit, which is capable of […]

The marketing minds at Fumakilla, a pesticide manufacturer, have launched a gimmicky bug spray promotional campaign that makes use of heat-sensitive, color-changing stickers placed in urinals at public restrooms around Shinjuku station. Under ordinary, dry conditions, the special urinal stickers show a housefly in the crosshairs of a rifle scope, but as men take aim […]

On June 11, the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) released photographs of a mysterious deep-sea creature believed to be an unknown species of comb jelly, or ctenophore, a jellyfish-like marine animal. Taken by JAMSTEC’s “Kaikou” unmanned submersible at a depth of 7,217 meters (nearly 24,000 feet) in the Ryukyu Trench about 200 […]

Via YouTube comes some inspiring musical magic by Tucker, Tokyo’s favorite turntable spinning, guitar and bass looping, oil can thumping, toy tweaking, cassette tape scratching, pyromaniac Electone player.
Here’s a small sampling of the many live clips found here (also check out a few cool videos for Sony here).

Tucker loops oil can/thumb piano/bass and scratches […]

Kansei, a robot face capable of 36 expressions that vary according to emotional interpretations of words it hears, is the latest achievement to emerge from a Meiji University research lab working to develop conscious and self-aware robots. When Kansei hears a word, it uses software to access a database of 500,000 keywords, create word associations […]

Next time you float past Hokkaido, look down upon the town of Urahoro. There in a field you will see a giant geoglyph that spells out the words “Smart Loop.”
This crop circle message is the work of a highly advanced race of aliens Pioneer, which has taken shears to grass to promote its latest […]

Internet content creator Hertz has launched a new marketing service called “QR Ebi-sen,” which allows companies and individuals to print QR code on shrimp crackers. QR code, a type of two-dimensional code that enjoys widespread use in Japan, connects users to mobile web content when they scan it with a QR code reader-equipped cellphone.
Using […]

In the latest development in Japan’s war against giant jellyfish invaders, scientists studying the biochemistry of echizen kurage (Nomura’s jellyfish) have discovered a previously unknown type of mucin in the sea creatures.
Mucins, the main structural components of mucus, are complex proteins found in human saliva, gastric juice and the lining of the stomach, all […]

Here are a few videos demonstrating some of the more diabolical uses of buildup’s animatronic panda suit. Be nice to pandas, or be prepared to suffer the consequences.

Sniper panda

Panda gang violence

Kung fu panda

On June 1, researchers from Osaka University’s Graduate School of Engineering unveiled a robot that acts like a human infant, which they hope may one day help scientists better understand the child development process.
The researchers have named the baby robot “CB2,” and for now, it is designed to function as a 1- to 2-year-old […]