An NTV morning news show plays with Choken Bako, a doggy bank that devours coins:

The doggy bank is available in black, white, and brown. It will go on sale on November 28th and be priced at around 2,310 yen.
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Some of Asahi TV’s foreign reporter team, visits a trash processing facility near Tokyo Bay and gets to see a giant claw in action:

The trash lifted by the claw is burned at 1450°C. The leftover metal is recycled.
In the second clip, they check out the tunnel under Tokyo Bay:

They are given a special tour [...]

“Mezamashi TV” morning show takes a new plug-in scooter for a 141-kilometer test run from Numazu to Tokyo:

The scooter runs fine on flat roads, but has serious trouble climbing hills – even with the assistance of some pedaling. They find that its battery dies rather quickly and the scooter must stop at random [...]

Yesterday, NTT East announced the internet-enabled Hikari iFrame (光iフレーム) in a bid to increase the number of households subscribing to its Flet’s Next fiber optic broadband internet service by targeting young women who are unskilled with computers.
The device will cost between 20,000 and 30,000 yen, run Google’s open source Android mobile OS, and double as [...]

Supposedly there is a small community of Japanese computer enthusiasts who like to carry around their notebook computers so they can get some “street computing” done while walking (or even riding bicycles!):

Some people say they are programming, while others are blogging. Two guys say that Twitter is responsible for turning them on to street [...]

At the bottom of SoftBank’s spring line up:
スタイリッシュなデザインに、3.7インチ有機EL液晶と1GHzの高速CPU「Snapdragon®」を採用したハイスペックなAndroidケータイ。Google™の各種サービスやAndroidマーケット™が利用可能。Wi-Fi対応
It will have a 3.7 inch OLED screen, a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, wifi, and access to the all google services including the market.
This phone appears to be neither of the two phones making news in the Android community, the Motorola Droid, which has a 3.7 inch LED [...]

Tired of holding a megaphone in your hands every time you want to be very very loud? Then get yourself a TOA hands-free megaphone:

Although similar products already exist, this TV show presented as a new invention. Expect to see street salespeople in Japan making use of this device very soon (if they aren’t [...]

A demonstration of the Sakasa Master Japan, a new toy that records your voice and plays it backwards:

If you write out the romanization of a Japanese word and then read it backwards, you can replay what you said and get something that sounds very much like that word. The official homepage of the toy [...]

“Nanikore Chin Hakkei” finds a restaurant in Tokyo’s Katsushika ward that has a hamburger vending machine:

The vending machine sells hamburgers for 100 yen each. Upon inserting a single 100 yen coin, a hamburger quickly comes out of the machine. However, a second try fails to produce a hamburger. It turns out that [...]

“Mezamashi TV” shows off some stylish new gadgets for this fall:

The new Sony Vaio X-series of notebook computers, which are really thin
A small humidifier shaped like a tree – good for Japan’s dry winters. The remote control is leaf-shaped.
A desk lamp that can be used to recharge USB gadgets
A cute new memory card reader [...]

It’s reading week in Japan! Here’s a few updates about e-book reading:

Don’t expect any e-books from Kodansha – Mainichi has an article up about the Kindle’s introduction to Japan. Whoever wrote the article made the mistake of stating that there is a “catalog of 1,500 titles available for purchase and download” for the [...]

Video of a new jumping robot developed by a venture company supported by Kyoto University:

The 38-centimeter-high and 1.6-kilogram robot, dubbed “Ropid,” was developed by the company’s president, 34-year-old Tomotaka Takahashi, over two and a half years. Boasting the highest jumping ability among humanoid robots, the Ropid can quickly bend its knees and ankles and jump [...]