One recent sweltering summer’s day, a tour bus from Tokyo pulled up at a sun-kissed beach at Atami, a Pacific coast resort southwest of the metropolis, and disgorged more than a dozen excited, iPhone-clutching young men.
The determined youngsters, paying scant attention to the bikini-clad girls frolicking on the sand, instead headed straight for a bronze statue that depicts Kanichi and Omiya, a couple from an old love story set in Atami.
The focus of the men’s attention—and of their smartphone cameras—was a tiny black and white square, a two-dimensional barcode that, …

A company employee in Nagano Prefecture calculated the value of pi to five trillion digits this month using a self-made personal computer, beating the record set by a French engineer who calculated it to about 2.7 trillion digits late last year.
To calculate the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, to an undetermined number of digits, Shigeru Kondo, a 55- year-old resident of Iida, assembled a computer with 32 terabytes of hard-drive capacity and used an application made by Alexander Yee, a 22-year-old student at a U.S. …

These images are from the first day of racing of Run’a Entertainment’s “Evangelion RT-01 apr Corolla” team in the Super GT300-class grand touring championship series.
The Team’s Toyota Corolla Axio was painted in homage to the anime’s Evangelion EVA-01 unit and the uniforms of drivers Koki Saga and Kosuke Matsuura were designed after the plug suit of the anime’s main character Shinji Ikari. The “race queen” models Noa Mizutani and Yuuna Chiba wore outfits inspired by the characters Rei and Asuka.
On this day of racing the Evangelion RT-01 apr Corolla team …

A Kyoto University team has developed a method to efficiently generate induced pluripotent stem cells that is less likely to lead to tumor development than the conventional method.
iPS cells are able to transform into the cells of any organ.
The new research, representing a step forward in putting iPS cells into practical use in regenerative medicine, was reported in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of the United States of America on Tuesday.
Generally, iPS cells are produced by introducing four types of genes into skin and other …

JAPAN is looking at sending a wheeled robot to the moon in five years and building a lunar base by 2020.
The robots would set up solar panels to generate energy and have an observation device to gather geological samples. The materials would then be sent back to Earth by rocket.
The robots would work from the lunar base at the moon’s south pole from 2020.
The plans are part of a year-long study backed by a panel of experts yesterday that will be recommended to Japan’s Government.
But it has been estimated the …

Robotic wheelchairs, mechanical arms and humanoid waiters are among the cutting-edge inventions on show at a robotics fair in Japan, a country whose population is ageing rapidly.
To ease the burden in a nation with one of the world’s highest life expectancies, engineers have come up with technologies to make life easier for the elderly and disabled, and their caregivers.
A new robot wheelchair developed at Saitama University near Tokyo doesn’t need to be propelled manually by the user or pushed by a caregiver but can instead automatically move besides a walking …

Researchers have created a baby bot in the hope that it’ll lead to an intelligent robot that can live with humans. The tiny androids are also being tested to help scientists understand more about the early stages of child development.

Honda Motor Co. plans to consolidate its lineup in Japan by ceasing development of new models of name-brand cars and will only offer a hybrid version of its Civic, according to a report Friday. The Nikkei business daily reported that while Honda plans to roll out a new Civic worldwide in fall 2011, in Japan only the hybrid version will be released. Honda also plans to discontinue the Legend sedan, and has already halted development of the Elysion, according to the report.
Source: Market Watch

Traveling to Japan or just need to escape the city?
Ishigaki is one of those resort islands in Okinawa that my brother-in-law loves and on his last trip there he said it was a blast! He also came back with a very nice bottle of shochu, which I admit I didn’t let last long.
How to get away from it all:
Step 1: Leave Tokyo!
Step 2: Fly 2,000 km south toward the Equator to Ishigaki, the main island of the southerly Yaeyama group in Okinawa Prefecture.
Step 3: Who Cares you are in paradise.
Enjoy …

Japan’s number one mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo has said it will add a new application platform to its “i-mode” handsets this year as it tries to catch up with Apple’s runaway iPhone success.
NTT DoCoMo will allow third-party individuals to develop applications for the company’s 50 million “i-mode” users, spokeswoman Makiko Furuta said.
DoCoMo revolutionised Japan’s mobile phone market with the 1999 launch of its i-mode service, which brought internet services to mobile phones. However, DoCoMo restricted the number of app developers, citing quality control issues.
But the recent emergence of open …