The Japanese Space Agency has unveiled a prototype of what it says is the world’s first solar powered sail spacecraft.

It will be launched together with the country’s first Venus orbiter on May 18. There is also a campaign you can be a part of in this project. Look below for information on how to get your name and a message into space.

Panasonic Corp. on Wednesday revealed the price for its first 3-D TV set, confirming that $3,000 is about what it takes to be among the first to watch 3-D movies in the home.

The Japanese company put its first 3-D sets on sale at an event in New York on Wednesday. Panasonic’s suggested retail price is $2,900 for a 50-inch plasma set, one pair of glasses and a 3-D Blu-ray player. An extra pair of glasses costs $150.

It goes without saying that Japan loves robots. Japanese pop culture has had a love affair with our metallic friends since the ’50s, and slowly but surely science is catching up to their imagination. fuRo, a Japanese robotic research & development firm, has taken their first tentative steps towards realizing a glorious future of wirelessly controlled robotic surrogates.

Japan’s top Internet forum 2channel was offline Tuesday after an apparent mass hacker attack from South Korea over slanderous comments on their Olympic figure skating queen Kim Yu-Na.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that more than 10,000 users had launched a “concerted cyber offensive” and coordinated their attacks through web communities since Monday against the popular site www.2ch.net.

Sony confirmed today that it has had an outage for its PlayStation Network that affects gamers with older PlayStation 3 consoles.

The Japanese company apologized to users and said the network went down over the weekend because of a bug with the system’s clock. It does not affect those who have the newer PS 3 Slim models that launched last August.

The latest addition to the rumor mill comes from an update that’s been made to a force feedback system patent Nintendo filed in 2005, pertaining to a dynamic rumble effect in a handheld console.
Pocket Gamer explains, “The DS saw a terribly executed rumble pack add-on that no one used, but this patent seems a lot more specific than that. It refers to more of a haptic feedback technology that could apply varying levels of physical sensation to either on-screen actions, or the use of peripherals”.
The patent (loosely) describes the use …

The new affordable, sporty hybrid Honda CR-Z is all set to go on sale in Japan.
CR-Z is short for “Compact Renaissance Zero”…and your guess is as good as mine on the name, but Honda is aiming the car at the younger generation, who want to go for a “green” car with a bit of flair and oomph. So what’s in a name? The car will go on sale in Japan today and in the United States and Europe by midyear.
Honda Motor Co. announced on Thursday that “the Japanese price would …

Researchers at Japan’s Kobe Gakuin University are developing a levitating chair that hovers on a small cushion of air.
The floating chair is being developed for elderly Japanese by Tsunesuke Furuta and others at the university’s rehabilitation department.
The prototype, inspired by arcade air hockey, seems to consist of an air compressor that shoots jets of air out of many openings beneath a sports-style car seat on a platform.
The seat can be swapped for a zabuton, a Japanese floor cushion. When kneeling on it, users can move around by dragging themselves across …

Suzuki Toshio’s radio show Ghibli Asemamire airs every week. The main guest a couple of weeks ago was Google Japan president Tsujino Koichiro and during their talk, Studio Ghibli producer Suzuki told that the famed Japanese animation studio is making a new short film; 10 minutes in length and made by Miyazaki Hayao. As many of the studio’s animators are working on the new feature Karigurashi no Arrietty, Miyazaki himself is even working on animating it as well. Though the short will have no dialogue, Suzuki mentioned it is very interesting, but can’t tell anymore details yet.

Talented and dedicated engineers spent countless hours designing Japan’s rail system to be one of the world’s most efficient. Could have just asked a slime mold.

When presented with oat flakes arranged in the pattern of Japanese cities around Tokyo, brainless, single-celled slime molds construct networks of nutrient-channeling tubes that are strikingly similar to the layout of the Japanese rail system, researchers from Japan and England report Jan. 22 in Science. A new model based on the simple rules of the slime mold’s behavior may lead to the design of more efficient, adaptable networks, the team contends.