The wags over on Slashdot are all in titter about this Yamaha-branded concept motorcycle.
Art Center College of Design shows Yamaha-branded wearable motorcycle concept
HellForLeather.com May 22, 2008… Design student Jake Loniak decided the idea of a machine as an extension of the body should be taken literally… Loniak’s concept is an electric vertically parking motorcycle controlled by 36 pneumatic muscles with 2 linear actuators...more...
Ok, ok, this exo-skeleton does seems to stretch the concept/rationality of “wearable”… but hot-damn it’s electric powered and goes 0 to 60 mph in 3 seconds and tops out at 75 mph! (0 to 97 km/h in 3 seconds, top-ends at 120 km/h!) 
Powered by ultra-capacitors and batteries the in-wheel motor drives this Inspector Gadget contraption.
I could see myself using it to weave through Tokyo gridlock and avoiding the recent infamous 30,000 yen ($300 USD) tickets for parking on the street or sidewalks since there are almost no parking lots that have motorcycle parking places.
In several 3Yen reports of the past three years, poor Japan has been dropping in world supercomputer race–over the past several years the Earth Simulator supercomputer has gone from No. 1 to ninth place. 
Never fear.
NEC’s new Earth Simulator system will help bring back the title to Japan for the world’s most fashionable, color coordinated supercomputer.
NEC Awarded Contract for New Earth Simulator System
hardwarezone.com : Fri 16 May 2008
… awarded the contract to build the “new Earth Simulator” ultra high-speed computing system for the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC).
The new Earth Simulator system will see an upgrade of the existing Earth Simulator, which has significantly contributed to the development of a simulation culture in the area of earth sciences and related technical fields….
…[it] is designed to deliver a system-wide peak performance of 131 TFLOPS (TFLOPS: one trillion floating point operations per second). Effective application performance is scheduled to increase two-fold on the existing Earth Simulator. The new system will be installed in the simulator building at JAMSTEC’s Yokohama Institute for Earth Sciences and is expected to commence operation in March 2009. ...more...
As my drinking buddy Rob Pongi, the comedian has quipped before, “I think that you can get a clone model of one of these built for you down in Akihabara!”
In Japan, it seems that cats and dogs are more popular than an actual child
SHUKAN ECONOMIST (May 6) via Japan Times
….there are more dogs and cats in this country (an estimated 23 million as of 2007) than there are children under 15….
…Shukan Economist traces modern Japan’s first of two pet booms to the economic bubble of the 1980s…[and then] around 2000, with three main differences: the dogs of choice are now the smallest imaginable; their owners are economically average; and, unlike its transitory predecessor, this boom could be here to stay. Its immediate spark seems to have been a TV commercial featuring a Chihuahua. The dog was adorable. Suddenly everyone had to have one…more…
Ok, ok, I lied about the Japanese outlawing humans under the age of 15 (but you get the idea).
However, “Qoo-chan” the chihuahua has been a hit for the Japanese loansharking company “AIFUL.” And since more people in Japan retire than join the work force each year, humans are now obsolete. Beware of the Japanese robot armies!
See the previous 3Yen reports on the chihuahua plague in Japan:
—Who let the chihuahuas out?
—Rat-nappings dog Tokyo
—Fad-driven inbred Japanese runts
—Loan shark sashimi
The obvious Japanese solution is to BAN ALL SWIMSUITS!
Swimming: Japanese coach urges swimsuit war at Olympics
Macau Daily Times - AFP-Saturday, 26 April 2008—A Japanese Olympic swimming coach on Thursday urged domestic makers to rival Speedo’s record-breaking swimsuit…”It’s swimsuit doping,” Norimasa Hirai, who coaches defending double Olympic breaststroke champion Kosuke Kitajima and others, quoted one of his charges as saying of the LZR Racer [Speedo’s swimsuit]….Japanese Olympic swimmers are obliged by the national federation to wear products supplied on contract by one of three Japanese makers — Mizuno, Asics and Descente — at the Beijing Games…more…
At $550.00 for 100 grams of swimsuit, Speedo’s LZR Racer costs more than dope.
“Unintentionally funny” ought to be the slogan of corporate Japan.
Eisai Introduces “Chocola BB® Royal 2” Vitamin B2 Drink for Extreme Fatigue
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - April 24, 2008–-Eisai Co., Ltd…will release “Chocola BB® Royal 2” (quasi-drug), a new 50 mL vitamin B2 drink, on Monday, May 12….address consumer needs and developing market for nutritional drink for women…
Case in point, I did a double-take when I saw these “Let’s Try!” self-suicide exercises on official health website of Chocola BB®.
See a larger version of above photo of old-school Chocola BB and other mega-funky Japanese patent medicines at PingMag.jp and the Retro Museum of Packaging from the Showa Era.
Japan turning itself into Cyberman machine civilisation
–Three million converted to undying robotoids by 2025–
The Register / 9 April 2008…. a specialist thinktank, the Machine Industry Memorial Foundation (MIMF?), has been set up to monitor the gradual infiltration of society by mechanoid impostors… MIMF’s latest estimates predict that 3.5 million Japanese workers - nearly three per cent of the population - will actually be automatic surrogates as of 2025.
In fact, the idea is that this is positive - the greying of Japan’s population is well known, as is its failure to reproduce itself….more...
Japanese love to claim they are “Homogenous” [inbreed] and “Unique” [un-diverse], so the nation policy of promoting humaniod robots makes perfect sense.
No foreigners—yes Cyberman!
Japan wants a robot “future” ….even though humanoid robots can’t do any real work and won’t able able to for many decades. Any kind of humanoid robot, even a clunky ”Star Wars” C-3PO is damp dream since autonomy –“consciousness”–for acting on their own is a long, loooong time away. Without “consciousness” robots are just spot welders, bolt tightening arms, burger flippers, spray painters, and factory drones that can swivel dexterously back and forth in a pre-programmed for assembly line work. They’re expensive toasters—one-trick-ponies. It will be many decades before humaniod style robots are going to be sentient.
And, this is much better!
DIY Battle Bot? All You Need Is $742 Million and No Sense of Reality!
Wired.com
Ni-i-i-ice, but….
Canoe made from disposable chopsticks
07 Apr 2008, PinkTentacle.com –-A former city employee in the Fukushima prefecture town of Koriyama has built a 4-meter (13-ft) long canoe from thousands of used disposable chopsticks recovered from the city hall cafeteria....more…
It is a nice idea to be obsessed with preventing the waste of waribashi—disposable chopsticks— since millions of disposable chopsticks are thrown away after a single-use.
However, the fact is that this canoe uses much MORE toxic petroleum resin to hold together all the recycled chopsticks than a regular strip-built canoe. The final environmental load/damage of this Japanese eco-trash canoe is greater than just using strips of wood.
Set to slow “simmer” is a how-to drawing from the Japanese bestseller with recent sales exceeding 30 million copies, “Practical Introduction to Slow Sex” (Kodansha, 2007).
–From bottom to top “simmer” (machine translation)
Japan’s Gov’t to Evaluate Safety of Nanomaterials
Nikkei Business Online, Mar 5, 2008 21:03
…”study group on nanomaterial safety” will discuss how to assess safety and what safety measures should be implemented amid the rapid advancement of nanotechnology applications and development, which has resulted in the possible health effects of nanomaterials uncertain…Labour Standards Bureau under the ministry issued to the director of the labour department in every prefecture on Feb 7, 2008.
In this notice, the bureau required efforts to seal manufacturing facilities, manage processes so workers are not exposed to nanomaterials and require that workers wear dust masks and other items to protect their breathing…more…
The potential dangers are not obvious–on the nanoscale, nature itself creates all kinds of nano objects. However, nanoparticles can pass the blood-brain barrier, which could make benign, seemingly non-toxic materials potentially harmful when inhaled or ingested (as well as beneficial as delivery vehicle of medications).
And then there is the “Grey goo” end-of-the-world scenario that replicating nanomachines run amok and consume everything. Fun hey?
- 
