Japanese inventions are known all over the world for their ingenuity, inventiveness, and downright insanity. Just look at Dr. Nakamats (if you’re into the awesome insanity part). Chindogu inventions, however, personify most of the strange aspects of Japanese inventiveness and less so their aspects of practicality. For those of you familiar with Rube Goldbergism, Chindogu [...]
Japanese robots have come a long way since the 17th century and I’m sure some of you remember the Geminoid robot, created by Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro, who was featured in our 12 Secretly Evil Japanese Robots Programmed To Haunt Your Nightmares post. Well, Dr. Ishiguro is at it again and this time he and his [...]
Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I have a thing for watches. I have frittered away many hours on watch forums, Amazon, YouTube, and eBay looking at watches, deciding what watch brands are worth the money and which ones are pure crap. As I am not yet a rich man I cannot at [...]
No, no – we’re not talking about aliens this time (sorry to let you down). The kind of UFO I’m referring to here is the classic Japanese arcade game: The Almighty UFO Catcher (or claw crane game for all you western-thinking peoples). But why is this particular UFO catcher such a big deal? Well for [...]
I was watching the trailer to Danny Choo’s TV show, Culture Japan, when something caught my eye. About a minute into the video, Danny loads his bike into a door, then a mechanical arms snatches it up and sorts it into a giant, vertical rack of bicycles. I did a double take when I first [...]
Move aside Ice Road Truckers. While you may drive your huge rigs in treacherous conditions, there is one thing you are lacking: you aren’t doing it in style. Yeah, it’s a bummer there are DOT laws and the sort that restricts awesome modifications such as the these: I do think it’s worth paying the $5,000 [...]
Sometimes it might be easy to think that all Japanese science and technology is all poop motorcycles and brain-powered cat ears. Sometimes, all we hear about out of Japan are the wacky, off-the-wall inventions and inventors. But in fact, Japan is a well-respected member of the scientific community that makes serious contributions to many fields. [...]
Japanese vending machines are a magical thing. Not only are there more vending machine per person in Japan than anywhere else in the world (1 vending machine for every 23 Japanese people), but they’re also incredibly inexpensive and convenient. For a mere １５０円, you can have any Japanese soda, milk tea, iced coffee, or other [...]
Earlier this week, Japan shattered the record for Tweets per second in a flurry of coordinated social media activity. Servers strained and the Fail Whale threatened to rear its ugly head, but Japanese Twitter users prevailed and sent out, at their peak, 11,000 Tweets a second. That’s nearly 700,000 Tweets per minute! What event was [...]
Probably more than anywhere else, robots are a big part of Japanese culture, and it’s no secret that we here at Tofugu think that these machines are evil, human-hating beings. But even with my open revulsion to these sinister automatons, I learned something interesting about them recently – they’re much older than I thought. Lots [...]
