Japanese electronics giant Sharp said Tuesday it had created a robot vacuum cleaner capable of recognising and responding to simple voice commands in several languages.
The Cocorobo understands dozens of phrases such as “good morning”, “clean the room” and responds differently “depending on the cleaning situation”, Sharp said in a statement.
It will also update owners on the battery level, when the dust collector needs emptying and such and even has a camera to take snaps of areas that need cleaning.
Read the rest of the story: Japan’s Sharp to sell talking robot …

A mugger who attacked a woman in Japan fled empty-handed — and with one finger missing — after the intended victim chomped off his pinkie.
The 59-year-old woman fought back after a man snatched her bag as she arrived at her apartment in the northern city of Sapporo, police said Tuesday.
The woman gave chase as her attacker made his getaway on a bike, wrenching the stolen tote from his grasp and biting down firmly on his little finger.
Read the rest of the story: Woman bites off muggers finger in Japan attack.

Yoshikazu Tanaka, Japan’s youngest billionaire and founder of Gree Inc. 3632, lost $702 million today after his social-gaming company plunged by the daily limit in Tokyo on concerns one of its sales methods may be illegal.
Japan’s second-biggest operator of social games fell 500 yen, or 23 percent, to 1,651 yen, the biggest drop since its December 2008 listing, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That wiped out 56.1 billion yen $702 million from the value of the 35-year-old Tanaka’s shareholding, based on calculations by Bloomberg.
Gree led drops among Japanese game-related …

Security cameras caught a driver hitting two women at a shopping center in Osaka on Monday, before speeding away without stopping.
The images show the car driving through the shopping center and making contact with a pedestrian in front of a shop. The car then smashes into a sign which hits another pedestrian.
An eyewitness said, “The car hit something and sped away, so I thought something must have happened and, at that moment, I saw a person collapsed on the ground.”
Four other hit-and-run incidents were reported around the same time. Police …

A tornado tore through Tsukuba in Ibaraki Prefecture on Sunday afternoon, killing one person, injuring dozens of others and destroying scores of houses.
Firefighters and medical teams rushed to the area after the tornado struck Tsukuba at 12:46 p.m. The city is a science center, with dozens of research and academic institutes, but the tornado appeared to be mostly in residential areas.
A 14-year-old boy died after being injured by the storm, Tsukuba Medical Center said.
Read the rest of the story: 14-yr-old boy killed, dozens injured after tornado hits Tsukuba.

Thousands of Japanese marched to celebrate the switching off of the last of their nations 50 nuclear reactors Saturday, waving banners shaped as giant fish that have become a potent anti-nuclear symbol.
Japan was without electricity from nuclear power for the first time in four decades when the reactor at Tomari nuclear plant on the northern island of Hokkaido went offline for mandatory routine maintenance.
After last years March 11 quake and tsunami set off meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, no reactor halted for checkups has been restarted amid public worries …

Another long, stupefyingly hot summer is looming for Japan just as it shuts down its last operating nuclear power reactor, worsening a squeeze on electricity and adding urgency to calls for a green energy revolution.
On Saturday, the last of the countrys 50 usable nuclear reactors will be switched off, completely idling a power source that once supplied a third of Japan’s electricity. At a time when temptation to set the aircon to deep freeze is at its greatest, companies and ordinary Japanese will be obliged to economize amid temperatures that …

Russia’s top natural gas producer Gazprom said on Thursday it was considering deliveries of gas to Japan via pipeline, and raised the prospect in a meeting with a Japanese parliamentary delegation in Moscow.
“The sides touched upon a possibility of working on a project for pipeline gas supplies from Russia to Japan,” Gazprom said in a statement.
Sakhalin-2, Gazprom’s far east consortium with Shell , Japan’s Mitsui and Mitsubishi Corp , has already been shipping liquefied natural gas to Japan and Russia has considered ways to increase fuels sales to its …

Novelist and Buddhist nun Jakucho Setouchi joined a hunger strike Wednesday in front of the industry ministry in Tokyo in protest the government’s moves to restart idled reactors at the Oi nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture.
Setouchi, 89, together with writers Hisae Sawachi, 81, and Satoshi Kamata, 73, plans to stage her hunger strike until sunset.
The antinuclear civic group began the hunger strike on April 17 in front of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which oversees nuclear power plant operators, in Tokyo’s Kasumigaseki district, home to a number …

Previous earthquakes that rivalled the March 2011 Tohoku tremor in size may be recorded in sediment samples just recovered from the seafloor off Japan.
A German-led scientific cruise obtained the cores from 16 different locations, some of them at a water depth of 7.5km.
The sediments hint at three major disturbances on the ocean bed that could be the result of the submarine landslides often seen with big quakes.
The researchers are currently trying to identify and date the events.
Read the rest of the story: Japan sea sediments tell of past ‘Tohoku quakes’.