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Mystery ramshackle boat carrying five rotten bodies washes up in Japan as police probe claims they died fleeing North Korea: Sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction, and nowhere is this more evident than North Korea. While there are always weird things happening within North Korean borders, sometimes the bizareness spills over to outside the country. Such is the case with a mysterious, apparently North Korean boat that washed ashore in Japan late last week. We’ll likely never know who the people aboard the boat were, nor how the managed to get all the way to Japan, thanks to the shroud of mystery that has surrounded the DPRK for the last 60 years.
[/threecol_two] [threecol_one_last]Nearly 90% dissatisfied with Japan’s English education: survey: Most people in Japan learn English in school but the results are, let’s say, far from optimal. In a new survey conducted by Rakuten Research, nearly 90% of Japanese parents said that they’re dissatisfied with their child’s English education. This shouldn’t be surprised but, as Daniel Feit wrote, a better headline would have been “13.4% of Japanese Parents Bizarrely Satisfied With Their Kids’ English Education.” [via Daniel Feit]

Saitama couple busted for allowing teens to watch intercourse in car for ‘sex education’:There’s no part of this story that’s not just outlandish and bizarre: a couple with a nearly 40-year age differences lets some kids watch them have sex under the guise of “sex education.” Will this defense work for flashers, streakers, and other exhibitionists? Let’s hope not.[/threecol_one_last]

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[threecol_one]TabletMan is Japanese tech personified: Japanese technology can be unique, interesting, but it’s always first and foremost very Japanese. Maybe no technology is more representative of this than TabletMan, Toshiba’s mascot for their burgeoning tablet line. TabletMan’s cool in theory, but I feel for the buy underneath the tablets. How would you like everybody coming up to touch you?

Seven & i Holdings to offer free wi-fi in 10,000 stores nationwide: In the US, virtually every cafe, hotel, and bar has free wifi, but historically (and by historically, I mean in the last five or so years), free wifi has been notoriously hard to come by in Japan. It looks like this is changing, with free wifi (with registration) is coming to 10,000 Seven & i Holdings convenience stores across Japan. As if you really need another reason to love Japanese convenience stores.[/threecol_one] [threecol_two_last]

The erotic guitars, decaying machines, and soy sauce of Maker Faire Tokyo: The Japanese prove that their among the most inventive people in the world year after year by not only their wacky inventions, but by the sheer number of patent applications. Nowhere was this inventive spirit more apparent than this week’s Maker Fair Tokyo, where amateur inventors showed off their cool, quirky creations. On display were a four-ton mech, a robot made out of a mannequin’s leg that played um, adult sounds, and a “pouring too much soy sauce machine.” These inventions might not change the world, but at the very least they’re damn entertaining.[/threecol_two_last]

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Nowadays just about every phone is also a camera and a camcorder, so keeping a record of your latest catch is a trivial matter – and of course you’d want to, if only to avoid having to insist “I swear it was this big!” to disbelieving friends and family. But way back in the day there was no such technology available, so the Japanese had to get creative – and lo, gyotaku was born.

The oldest known gyotaku print is that of a carp, and is from 1839.

Gyotaku (魚拓) or “fish rubbing” dates back to at least the Tempou era, and is still in practice today. Gyotaku prints are appreciated as works of art, but have a practical aspect too: many fishing contests in Japan are still decided by gyotaku prints because photographs do not always express the true size of a catch.

The two main variants, namely the direct and indirect methods, both use inks to transfer the likeness of the fish to a sheet of paper or cloth. Finer details like the eyes are painted or drawn in by hand later. The following video demonstrates the direct method by Naoki Hayashi:

Mineo Yamamoto has been a gyotaku artist since 1973, and a great proponent of the indirect method. In the following video, where he instructs a student in the making of a gyotaku print, ink is dabbed onto the paper or cloth instead of being painted directly onto the fish:

As you might have guessed, a skilled gyotaku artist can produce incredibly detailed and lifelike images, especially if colored inks are used. Here are just a few examples I found on the interwebs:

Caught something that wasn’t quite a fish? No problem!

Hmm… I wonder what else we could gyotaku-fy…

So, has anyone tried gyotaku before? If you don’t fish, do you have a particularly docile cat or dog willing to stand in? Let us know in the comments!

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There are millions of ikebana practitioners worldwide, so it’s certainly in no immediate danger of dying out. Keeping this art alive though is totally reliant on catching the interest of new enthusiasts, especially from the younger generation – and let’s face it, ikebana just doesn’t quite have the same street cred as say, kendo or jujutsu.

So I was pleasantly surprised to come across Shinji Nakaba’s ikebana rings. Sultry-eyed models? Check. Pouty lips? Check. Ikebana rings? Check! Yes, you young ’uns, ikebana can be cool and sexy!

Nakaba-san’s ikebana rings all operate on the same basic principle: they have a semi-automatic, pin locking and release system, which can be used to pin all sorts of flowers, leaves, and so on. The following video demonstrates how to put it all together; it’s quite grainy but hopefully you get the idea.

With just a bit of time, a dash of creativity, and random bits of plants, you could have a one-of-a-kind, completely personalized accessory for every day of the week!

If you find flowers much too gaudy, too cumbersome, or too girly, why not go the minimalist route? Less is more, and just a single, simple leaf can make quite a statement.

You don’t have to limit yourself to just flowers and leaves either. As long as it’ll fit on the pin, anything goes.

Purists might say that Nakaba-san has completely bastardized ikebana, but I think his rings are pretty cool. They make ikebana very hip and now, are an awesome way to get your creative juices going, plus who says jewelry has to be a chunk of yellow metal or compressed carbon?

Nakaba-san makes other accessories like necklaces and brooches too, so be sure to check out his site if you like that sort of thing.

Recently, a group of Japanese were recognized for their outstanding work in the field of strange inventions. The infamous Ig Nobel Prize awarded these Japanese inventors for their work on a smoke detector that spews wasabi.

What Is The Ig Nobel Prize?

The Ig Nobel Prize is an annual prize awarded to inventions “that make people laugh then make them think.” These are inventions that won’t necessarily change the world as we know it or cure cancer, but are interesting in their own right in the ways they solve specific, niche problems. In short: this award was basically something created for wacky Japanese scientists like Dr. NakaMats.

The Prize is awarded for lots of different categories which vary from year to year including the typical Nobel Prize categories like peace, literature, and chemistry; but the Ig Nobel Prize can also award prizes for oddly specific categories like public safety, veterinary medicine, and aviation.

The Ig Nobel Prize award ceremony itself is pretty goofy. The Prizes are given away by actual Nobel Laureates, but that’s about the extent of the ceremony’s seriousness. Wacky rituals and running gags punctuate the ceremony, including barrages of paper airplanes flying at the stage and sword swallowing.

Japanese Domination

Not surprisingly, tons of previous winners have been Japanese; you could even say that the Japanese are building a dynasty of Ig Nobel Prize winners. Last year’s Japanese winners were scientists who determined that slime can be used to map out railroad tracks. 2009′s Japanese scientists discovered that kitchen garbage can be shrunk down using bacteria derived from panda poop. The list goes on.

And yes, Dr. NakaMats actually did win an Ig Nobel Prize in 2005 for photographing and analyzing every meal he’s eaten in the last 30 years, a contribution to modern nutrition that won’t soon be forgotten.

The Wasabi Smoke Detector

The Wasabi Smoke Detector won this year’s Ig Nobel Prize for chemistry. So what makes this particular invention so great? Not only was it an achievement for the scientists to get the wasabi to the right consistency to be sprayed out from the smoke detector, but the invention has uses you might not have thought about: it’s a fantastic solution for deaf people who wouldn’t be able to hear a typical fire alarm.

One of the scientists who worked on the project said this upon receiving the prize:

This prize is a gift from the subjects who slept in the examination room and had been choked with [the] pungent smell [that caused] tears and coughing. I do appreciate their courage and cooperation.

P.S. Got ideas for other scented fire alarms? Tell me on Facebook.
P.P.S. Yearn for other wasabi-powered inventions? Let me know on Twitter

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Seriously Japan? Seriously? Every time I think that Japan’s invented the most ridiculous thing, whether it’s a burger made out of poop, sex doll dentistry robot, or a toilet-based video game, Japan just keeps taking it to the next level. All of these inventions are basically past the point of self-parody now.

But now the Japanese company Toto has upped the stakes yet again with their poop-powered motorcycle. Why on earth would anybody think that this is a good idea?

Toto

What is Toto? Before you say anything no, the Toto I’m talking about isn’t the dog from the Wizard of Oz, or the 80s band that had that song “Africa.” If you’ve ever seen or heard of those futuristic Japanese toilets with control panels that heat the seat, generate a courtesy flush noise and have a built-in bidet, it’s probably been made by Toto. In fact, Toto has even trademarked a name for these modern toilet control panels: “washlets.”

#1 sign you’re a foreigner: taking pictures of the toilet.

Not only has Toto conquered the bathroom in Japan, but it’s made a huge dent in the Japanese business world too. Toto is a major Japanese company, part of Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock market, and worth almost US$5 billion.

Waste Not, Want Not

The 3/11 disaster caused a huge energy shortage in Japan. Tons of power plants (including the infamous nuclear plants in Fukushima) were taken out of commission because of the earthquakes and tsunami, so the government began pushing for Japanese companies to cut down on their energy usage.

Companies have done this in lots of different ways. Some companies have used less air conditioning in the summer and encouraged their workers to wear cooler clothes. Toto, on the other hand, set their scientists hard at work in making a poop-powered vehicle.

Well okay, Toto is doing more than just that. The company aims to cut its total emissions by 50% over the next couple of years by doing lots of different things. The poop motorcycle is more of a icon for the whole effort rather than the product of it all.

Toilet Bike Neo Project

“Just a few…more…steps…”

But let’s get down to the motorcycle itself. It’s called the “Toilet Bike Neo Project,”and it’s fueled by “biogas,” a word I can only assume is a euphemism for “lots of poop.” The motorcycle will cruise from a Toto plant in the southern island of Kyushu all the way to Tokyo starting today, October 6. The cycle will ride around for about a month, stopping to educate people on Toto’s conservation efforts and visiting exciting locales such as this butt-shaped rock (yes, I’m serious.)

But that’s not even mentioning the cool features of the Toilet Bike Neo Project. The bike itself has a few novel features that you won’t find on any other poop-powered motorcycle:

Talking Toilet

But it wouldn’t be a Toto toilet unless it was somehow over the top. So that’s why the Toilet Bike Project not only plays music, but also features a talking toilet, complete with a lid that moves up and down like a mouth. All of the childhood nightmares you thought you were long past have culminated into a real-life, ivory terror.

[yframe url='www.youtube.com/watch?v=77nvLGWIfT8']

Light Up Messages

Not only does this motorcycle run on biogas, but it has other cool features too. There are a series of LEDs on the side of the motorcycle and a small computer that controls them. As the motorcycle makes its rounds across the country, it can use the LEDs to write messages as it rides on by. It seems that these messages can’t really be seen unless they’re captured by a long-exposure camera, but it’s still a cool effect.

What kind of messages will the Toilet Bike Project spread? I would hope that it would warn people to stay away from the poop bike and its horrible stench, but more realistically, it will probably be used to spread messages about energy conservation and Toto.

Yeah, kind of like that.

You can check out the project’s official site here, or a good write-up on Spoon & Tamago here.

What do you think of this biogas motorcycle? Do you think it can catch on in the real world, or is it just a novelty? Let me know in the comments!

P.S. Are you already building your own poop bike? Tell me on Twitter.
P.S.S. Would you buy a poop-powered car? Let me know on Facebook.

Japan has never failed to bring the world terrifyingly lifelike humanoid robots. Sometimes I feel like Japan is situated right in the middle of the Uncanny Valley.

But sometimes these freakish inventions can actually do more than scare people. Sometimes these inventions can actually be very helpful, like one of Japan’s newest inventions, the dental robot. This robot helps aspiring dentists learn their craft, but also has a bit of a surprising background.

A long and illustrious line of horrifying dental robots.

Showa University has once again upped the stakes for Japan by producing a robot for dental students to practice on called the Showa Hanako 2. The university, in collaboration with Wasdea and Kogakuin Universities, teamed up with sex doll makers Orient Industries to help construct the Showa Hanako 2, creating the biggest collaboration between educators and perverts since Harvard teamed up with Hugh Hefner.

With the expertise from Orient Industries, Showa University has created a much more lifelike robot than their first attempt at a dental training robot, the Showa Hanako 1, whose wide mouth reminds me more than a little bit of Ichi the Killer:

“Smiles, everyone!”

In fact, this is Showa University’s third generation of dental robot in ten years. Each has been getting more and more lifelike, which I can’t tell is a good or bad thing.

There are lots of features that put the Showa Hanako 2 head and shoulders above other animitronic dental training robots. Showa Hanako 2 can do all of the following:

• Blink
• Talk and understand when someone is talking to it
• Move its motorized tongue
• Cough and sneeze
• Complain about having it mouth open for too long
• React with a gag reflex

Showa Hanako 2 even has a pulse in its right wrist, as if it needed to be more eerily lifelike.

With all of these feature on top of its humanoid appearance, the Showa Hanako 2 is truly cutting edge. You can see it in action as one of its creators talk more about it in this video:

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The robot itself may be terrifyingly lifelike and built on pervert technology, but I can definitely get behind the concept. What better way to have dental students practice their craft without giving somebody an accidental root canal? Anything that helps medical professionals become better at what they do is a-okay in my book.

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