This blog offers selected features of alternative Asian TV segments, news stories, editorials, photos and more from Japan, Korea, India, China and many other Asian countries. This blog also includes some WTF Japanese, North Korean online videos, entertainment news, beautiful Chinese and Japanese models, and much more.
Just published yesterday, here is a beautiful new fine art self portrait of Julie Watai wearing Activelink's Power Loader robotic exoskeleton suit. This suit gives its operator superhuman strength and can enable workers to become real life terminator cyborgs. Well, not really. Below is a short demonstration video on how this technology works:
Did you ever want to play Janken (rock, paper, scissors) by yourself and lose everytime in order to deflate you ego, crush your self esteem and achieve today's highly sought after Forever Alone loser status? Well, the folks at the Ishikawa Oku Laboratory - University of Tokyo have just released the right robot for you! This is the Janken (rock-paper-scissors) Robot with 100% winning rate. This high tech fapping machine hand robot just has to be seen to be believed. Check it out:
This video is also a preview to the upcoming science fiction movie "Rock, Paper, Scissors":
Does the robot hand in the video bear a striking resemblance to the flying hands in the movie poster? Eerie. Actually, this robot has been developed for this reason:
In this research we develop a janken (rock-paper-scissors) robot with 100% winning rate as one example of human-machine cooperation systems. Human being plays one of rock, paper and scissors at the timing of one, two, three. According to the timing, the robot hand plays one of three kinds so as to beat the human being.
Just in time for summer, the fun-loving folks at Japan Trust Technology recently unveiled their "Gokiraji USB infrared RC cockroaches" or remote-controlled robotic glow-in-the-dark cockroaches! Perhaps you are an insect collector, gadget geek, wannabe entomologist or general of your very own bug brigade, then this all-new Gokiraji! ゴキラジ！should fit right in with all of the real cockroaches or Gokiburi ゴキブリ invading your sweltering abode in Japan. You can buy one for 1,680 yen ($21.08) or two for 3,360 yen ($42.17). Check out the below demonstration video:
The remote control can be recharged simply by connecting it to any USB 2.0 port. Note: These new toy cockroaches do not fly nor procreate. Order yours today!
Just released yesterday by Lawrence Chen Films, here is a very cute and somewhat sad short film entitled "Made in China." This mini movie depicts the birth, onset of self awareness, forever alone lifestyle and the ultimate Entombment of a Machine. Check it out:
"Made in China" was created by the following film crew:
Director and DP: Lawrence Chen
Writers: Lawrence Chen and Hagan Wong
Producer: Tiffany Shi
1st AD and AC: Eddie Chen
Operators: Eddie Chen and Michael Chang
Production Coordinator: Michael Chang
Editors: Lawrence Chen and Hagan Wong
Music: Ryan King
Via WTF Japan Seriously - Keio University's robotic researcher Masato Takahashi just released his new invention that will significantly advance the human race forevermore - the all-new Japanese fapping clapping robots:
According to Tokyo Tek these clapping hands robots were modelled after the inventor's arms and were made with "an aluminium skeleton coated with urethane flesh and were specially designed to make a natural sounding clap" and that "they can be used at concerts to enhance the sound of real clapping" or as good "spanking machines" to, of course, spank the monkey with! DUH! It all makes perfect sense now.
Recently, I went to an old, long-term Japanese friend's wedding and it was really something else! It included a party of over 200 people, wine from the bubble era of the late '80s/early '90s, some well-known Japanese TV celebrities and far too much gourmet food. Indeed, it was quite a wonderful and rare occasion to behold, especially right here in Tokyo.
So what the flock of seagulls could possibly be causing all of this? Well, one big reason can be seen in the now very popular 'wakaresase-ya' or the 'breakup service industry':
"Until the unexpected phone call comes and she learns the breathtaking truth, Rika Suzuki will remember it as a night of fun and excitement in a cheerless and humdrum life. It began with an invitation from a young female friend, Kaori, whom she’d met by chance a few weeks earlier. A group of friends were going out for the evening and, unexpectedly, Rika — 40, and unhappily married — was invited to join them.
They met in one of Tokyo’s smartest restaurants; the beer and saké flowed. Kaori’s friends were flatteringly interested in her, none more so than a man of her own age named Osamu Ota, a successful businessman with a droll and confident charm. When the bar at which they ended up closed for the night, it was Osamu who suggested that they all take a room in an hotel so that the party could continue. And as the others said their goodbyes several hours later, it was he and Rika (not her real name) who were left behind.
The photographs taken the morning after tell the story of what happened next: the discarded clothes and screwed up tissues and Rika, looking bashful but happy, sitting among the churned up sheets of the hotel bed. “These are her earrings on the bedside table, and that’s her belt,” says Ota, who is showing me the photographs. “And these . . . bodily liquids on the sheet — well, these are the proof of what happened.”
In other circumstances, this would be unsavoury, but predictable, sexual bragging. But Rika was the victim, not of a straightforward womaniser, but something more chilling: a meticulously planned professional sting operation.
Everyone involved in that wild evening — from the young “friend” who invited her, to the guests in the restaurant — was an actor, an employee of an agency that specialises in sexual entrapment. The chance meeting with “Kaori” weeks before, the dinner invitation and the act of seduction were commissioned and paid for by someone Rika has never met — the lover of her husband, a woman who yearns for the failure of Rika’s marriage.
The whole thing was masterminded by Mr “Ota” — real name Osamu Tomiya — a member of a peculiarly Japanese profession, part-private investigator, part-prostitute, known as wakaresase-ya — the “splitter-uppers”."
Not exactly a supermodel, indeed. Its the all new HRP-4C developed by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan and unveiled at the recent Japan Fashion Week 2009 in Tokyo. The price of this 'model' is $1.97 million! Quite an expensive entry into the Uncanny Valley:
By MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press Writer Fri Jan 27, 2006
"When Hara asks for a bottle of juice, the two demonstrate a more advanced task, one relays the instruction to the other, saying "Please take care of this."
The second robot huddles to a refrigerator, stands in front of it for a while, saying "Confirming the location of the refrigerator." Then he says "Searching for the juice," slowly opens the door with a right hand, grabs a bottle of drink with his left hand, shuts the fridge, then walks back to him, squats down at the table and carefully places it on the coffee table.
