Archive for August, 2007

Camcorder Use Now Illegal In Japanese Theaters

Just a reminder to all you pirates out there:

TOKYO — Japan’s anti-camcording law went into effect on Thursday, making it illegal to record pics in theaters.

The law was passed late in May, with a sentence of up to 10 years and a fine of up to Y10 million ($86,960) or both for violators.

Industry orgs — including the Japan and Intl. Motion Picture Copyright Assn., the Motion Picture Producers Assn. of Japan, the Japan Assn. of Theater Owners, the Foreign Film Importer-Distributors Assn. of Japan and the Japan Video Software Assn. — jointly lobbied the government for the legislation in January and pressed vigorously for its passage.

And to put that message into pictures, here is one of the PSA’s about the new law that was being shown before movies at theaters in Japan (which appears to have been filmed with a camcorder):

Final Fantasy Potion In A Can

Suntory and Square Enix are teaming up to release a special canned edition of their Final Fantasy VII potion drink. The cans, which go on sale October 23rd, will have 16 different versions, each depicting a character from Final Fantasy VII. the potions will be priced at 191 yen a can, which is about 1.65 US dollars. While it is a limited edition drink, the fact that 4.8 million cans will be put on sale probably means they will be widely available across Japan!

[via Pink Tentacle]

Three Amazing Advancements In Printing Technology

Wednesday night’s The Best House aired a very cool segment showing what it deemed to be the “Top 3 Amazing Printing Technologies”. Here they are:



1. The 3D Printer

The printer shown in this clip it Z Corporation’s ZPrinter 450. The Z450 can take a model on a computer and print it out in 3D. The examples shown in the video include a life-like reproduction of a melon and a model of a house (including the interior of the building!). At a price of just under 40 thousand dollars, this printer is “makes color 3D printing accessible to everyone.”



2. The D-Touch Pen

The above video shows us a few demonstrations of Takara’s D-Touch technology. The key to this technology are tiny patterns, invisible to the human eye, which are printed onto paper. The tiny patterns, which can be printed over with other images, contain data that corresponds to a certain sound clip from a box attached to the D-Touch pen. This technology was originally developed to create cool books for toddlers, but it is now being used to create helpful tools for the visually impaired.



3. Micro Printing

The tiny book shown in this clip is 0.95mm by 0.95mm, and the letters printed on its pages are a mere 0.12mm in height! While such a tiny book might be useless, this printing technology hardly is. It is currently being used to make new paper currencies that are harder to counterfeit.

Takeru Kobayashi’s 5 Favorite Foods

The Wall Street Journal has interviewed professional eater Takeru Kobayashi to find out five of his favorite foods. Here’s the list:

• Cold tofu
• Yogurt
• Bagels with cream cheese and lox
• Royal milk tea
• Vietnamese spring rolls

Read the full article here!



[via Eat Feats]

Chinese Chocolate: May Contain Live Worms

The Japanese media is spending a great deal of its effort covering the Asashoryu sumo scandal, but they have found time to report on the latest Chinese product scare:

Details on the same story shown in the above video in English, from the India Times:

On Wednesday (August 29).. worms and moths crawled out of a box of chocolates imitating a popular international brand, and even a few larvae. But by the time this was noticed, a few chocolate balls had been consumed. The chocolates were picked up by a Korean consumer on his trip to China. But local manufactoring experts say it looks as though the contamination happened during the manufactoring process.

“It seems to be seriously contaminated during the manufacturing process since the larvae of Plodia Interpun were found,” says Professor Ahn Young-chul at Eulji University.

A worm crawls out of holes in chocolate made in South KoreaReports suggest that worms were found in some chocolates made in Korea as well. But the news about the ‘China Chocolates’ adds to the already-damaged “Made in China” brand.

Not long after this story broke, China announced that it had discovered some microscopic worms in wooden packaging from the United States. I haven’t heard any reports about that on Japanese TV yet, and I doubt it will get the kind of coverage that shocking images of plainly visible worms crawling out of food products generate.

New Creepy Cat Robot Goes On Sale In Japan

Fuji Television’s Mezamashi TV did a report this morning on Sega Toys’ “Yume Neko Smile” [Dream Cat Smile], which hits stores across Japan today. Here’s the video [what's with the weird-bearded old guy?]:

This commercial for the robo cat also shows off its two main emotions ["meow" and "angry sound"] and amazing ability to tell when its tail is being pulled:

If that’s not enough robo cat for you, here’s a demonstration that shows off a few more of the robot’s abilities:

Sega’s robo cat has a retail price of 8,379 yen, or about 72 US dollars. For more details, check out the official “Yume Neko Smile” page at Segatoys.co.jp!