The preliminary calculations conducted by a team from the university’s Earthquake Research Institute were based on intensified seismic activity in the area after the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11.

The findings are more dire than a similar estimate by the central government’s Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion, which states there is a 70 percent chance a quake of the same scale will hit the southern Kanto region, including the metropolitan area, within 30 years.

Sounds pretty scary. Should we believe the forecast? Not necessarily.

In April of 2011, Nature published “Shake-up time for Japanese seismology” by Professor Robert J. Geller of Tokyo University (Japanese version available here). Geller argues that earthquakes cannot be reliably predicted.

When one compares the Japanese government’s national seismic hazard map to the actual areas where large earthquakes have occurred in the last 30 years, one notices the problem:

“Although such maps may seem authoritative, a model is just a model until the methods used to produce it have been verified. The regions assessed as most dangerous are the zones of three hypothetical ‘scenario earthquakes’ (Tokai, Tonankai and Nankai; see map). However, since 1979, earthquakes that caused 10 or more fatalities in Japan actually occurred in places assigned a relatively low probability. This discrepancy — the latest in a string of negative results for the characteristic earthquake model and its cousin, the seismic-gap model — strongly suggests that the hazard map and the methods used to produce it are flawed and should be discarded.”

Very general predictions are possible:

“If global seismicity and the historical record in Tohoku had been used as the basis for estimating seismic hazards, the 11 March Tohoku earthquake could easily have been ‘foreseen’ in a general way, although not of course its particular time, epicentre or magnitude.”

But the Japanese government continues to rely on methods that attempt – and apparently fail – to predict earthquakes of specific magnitudes taking place in specific regions.

“All of Japan is at risk from earthquakes, and the present state of seismological science does not allow us to reliably differentiate the risk level in particular geographic areas. We should instead tell the public and the government to ‘prepare for the unexpected’ and do our best to communicate both what we know and what we do not. “

Much of Geller’s article focuses on the Japanese government’s official Tokai earthquake prediction. However, the general message is clear: there is no reliable method for forecasting earthquakes.

The latest forecast for Tokyo does not appear to represent a sudden new breakthrough in the field of earthquake predictions. What’s new about it is that heavy emphasis is placed on the increase in seismic activity that occurred in the 6 months following the March 11th disaster. [For a detailed analysis of the forecast - see this post. ]

Some of the articles about the new Tokyo prediction have presented it alongside the highly questionable Tokai earthquake prediction. Both predictions are based on methods that have not been verified as accurate.

Don’t trust the hype. Big earthquakes do happen in Japan, but experts do not know where and when the next big one will occur. If you live in Japan, be prepared for earthquakes, even if you’re outside of what have been deemed high risk areas.

[gigantic hat tip to Steve]

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The Asahi recently scaled down the content on its regular English articles and started directing readers to its Asahi Japan Watch (AJW) section for the full versions. Unfortunately, they are limiting free access to AJW articles. After hitting the limit (which seems to be around 20 article views a month), readers will have to pay about $12 a month for a subscription.

The Yomiuri and Mainichi are still providing free access to their English language sites. The three newspapers tend to overlap a bit in their coverage of major stories, so I doubt many people will be willing to pay for the Asahi when free alternatives are available.

Important Note: Clearing or disabling cookies will allow you to bypass Asahi’s article viewing limit.

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In 2011, a campaign by 2channel posters against Fuji Television for its perceived pro-Korean bias intensified, culminating in a large protest outside Fuji TV headquarters on August 21. No mainstream Japanese news organization reported on the protest, but in a mysterious coincidence, on August 24 Fuji TV aired a special report on a scary underground website called 2channel used for selling illegal drugs. Their evidence for the drug trade was a single post from 2010 that used code words to refer to MDMA, marijuana, and cocaine.

Police, frightened by Fuji’s report, launched an investigation into 2channel, which seems to have become quite serious in recent days. Today, the newsweekly Shuukan Asahi reported that items have been seized from 2channel-related businesses and that founder Hiroyuki Nishimura, who no longer has any ties to 2channel, was called in for questioning. Police hoped to extract from Hiroyuki the real names and locations of the website’s anonymous moderators. According to the magazine, a publication of the Asahi Shinbun newspaper, investigators are calling 2ch a “hotbed of crime” because moderators did not delete the single post from 2010. (Over 1,800,000 posts are made on 2channel every day.) It is not yet clear whether the moderators will be arrested or if these police scare tactics will affect 2channel’s day-to-day operations, despite Shuukan Asahi calling the probe an “extermination mission”.

In related news, at midnight on January 9, 2channel’s anonymous moderators set up a new forum with special copyright restrictions. 2channel is used as a source by hundreds of blogs, which reprint news articles and the posts of 2channel users without any acknowledgement of copyright. Remarkably, in a country where copyright is taken very seriously, these outlaw blogs are not only quite popular but have acquired corporate sponsorship and ad dollars that 2channel itself has never been able to get, which makes the message board’s users quite mad.

Since 2004, when publishers ran into serious trouble securing copyright permissions from the anonymous posters on the Densha Otoko threads, copyright on posts has been owned by 2channel. Because 2channel’s legal operations were moved to Singapore in order to avoid libel suits from angry Japanese celebrities, it now lacks the means to easily file lawsuits itself. That doesn’t change the fact that copying people’s posts violates copyright. These blogs exist in a legal gray area, but that doesn’t stop them from getting corporate sponsors. The gaming blog Hachimaki, which is often the source of breaking news on Kotaku and other American blogs, is quietly funded by Sony and Kadokawa Shoten. The anime blog Yaraon is affiliated with the anime production house SHAFT, the producers of Hidamari Sketch among other popular shows. Paranoid 2channel users accuse these affiliate blogs of posting articles to 2channel itself in order to generate fake articles and make money for their corporate masters, a much speculated-on activity called “stealth marketing”, i.e. viral marketing.

In order to address the incessant arguments over viral marketing, moderators opened a new board, “Breaking News (Non-Commercial)“, which explicitly forbids reprinting, and therefore would not be profitable for Japan’s corporate overlords. Of course, it remains to be seen whether affiliate blogs will actually follow these rules. They currently seem to be limiting themselves to mocking non-commercial activists and boasting about the continued use of the old forum, which has in fact drastically fallen off.

Both of these stories are likely to drastically affect how news reaches the English-speaking Internet from Japan in the years to come.

Contributor Bio: Avery teaches English somewhere near Takeo. When he is not translating things, he is probably visiting haikyo or researching weird footnotes in Japanese history. He can be reached on Twitter at @ahm.

A very cool video put together by the “Japan Institute of Science and Technology” (never heard of them):

“Here is a short footage on our recent work on quantum levitation. We were inspired by the game Wipe’out to do our work. With this new technology, we hope to revolutionize the world of motor transport; Maybe in a near future we could assist to a real Wipe’out race.”

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Toshiba and IHI have developed a mobile water treatment system:

The system, which is mounted in truck, can filter about 1 ton of water in an hour. If the input water is contaminated with high levels of cesium, the end product will have below 10 Bq/kg of radioactivity: far below the current legal limit of 200 Bq/kg (and below a proposed new limit of 10 Bq/kg).

The system will likely be used to clean up contaminated ditches, ponds, and pools.

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Japan has officially picked the Lockheed F-35 Lightning (JSF) as the replacement for its aging fleet of fighter aircraft.

As Bloomberg reports, the jets are going to be very expensive:

Japan’s F-35s will replace Boeing F-4s, which were last assembled in the country in 1981. Japan had a total of 362 fighter jets as of March 31, according to the defense ministry’s website.
The initial contract with Lockheed is for four jets in the fiscal year beginning April 1, the Bethesda, Maryland-based contractor said today in a statement. The company will begin delivering jets to Japan in 2016, Steve O’Bryan, Lockheed’s vice president for business development, said on a conference call.

Japan will pay 8.9 billion yen ($114 million) for each of the first four jets, according to Masaki Fukasawa, director of aircraft division at the defense ministry. The nation’s total cost for the purchase, operation and maintenance of the 42 fighters is estimated at 1.6 trillion yen over 20 years, Fukasawa said.

The Pentagon has praised the decision, as it will apparently allow better coordination with United States and Australian forces.

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Most cameras and mobile phones in Japan automatically make shutter sounds when they are used to take a photograph, a feature that makes it difficult for perverts to secretly capture upskirt images. Smart phone such as the iPhone usually allow users to disable all sounds, but iPhones sold in Japan have been altered to keep the shutter sound on.

However, as the Yomiuri has pointed out, some smartphone applications can disable shutter sounds:

On Nov. 12, a man was arrested at a train station in Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, after he took photos up the skirt of a female vocational school student with his smartphone as she stood on an escalator.

The man reportedly told police he used an app that silenced the shutter sound to prevent his target from noticing what he was doing.

A man arrested in September after he photographed a woman’s underwear in Tokyo also reportedly told police he had used such an app to stealthily take photos about 20 times.

According to the National Police Agency, 1,741 cases of illicit photography were reported nationwide last year, a 1.6-fold increase from 2006.

The largest number of snap-happy camera voyeurs was reported in Kanagawa Prefecture.

“About 30 percent of cases involved the misuse of smartphone apps,” a senior Kanagawa prefectural police investigator said.

There are already methods that allow determined people to disable the shutter sounds of non-smartphone cameras. It seems that smartphone apps are making this kind of behavior more accessible to people with less technical ability….

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Earlier this year, Japanese police investigating a cyberattack on Mitsubishi Heavy Industries determined that there was a very high likelihood that the attack originated in China. The Japanese government asked the Chinese government to investigate, but as the Japan Times has reported, the Chinese government doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it:

China said in its reply it would contact the relevant authorities, but there has been little progress since, leaving the investigation at a standstill, they said.

After its own investigation, Mitsubishi Heavy said viruses had infected its in-house servers and computers in mid-August but there was no sign important defense-related data was taken.

NPR ran a story yesterday about how the same kind of thing has been happening in America. The U.S. authorities have privately complained to China, but they’ve also seen no significant action to stop the cyberattacks. This kind of industrial espionage is costing the American economy billions of dollars:

Rep. Mike Rogers has actually spoken with executives from some of the American businesses hit by cyberattacks, and he says stolen intellectual property from just one hi-tech company cost them billions of dollars in research and revenue as well as thousands of U.S. jobs.

“Those are 10,000 jobs that would be in this economy, that would employ Americans, that are gone because of Chinese economic espionage,” he says.

New estimates put losses from intellectual property espionage at about a trillion dollars a year, Rogers says. And he says U.S. companies that deal in intellectual property fall into two camps: those that know they’ve been hacked and those that don’t know.

“There really is no other exception than that,” he says.

And if that’s the case in America, you can be assured that the same thing has happened in Japan. The attack on Mitsubishi is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

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A commercial for NTT’s Hikari Wifi service educates viewers about the possibilities of wireless internet technology:

Cute angels from Sakura Gakuin send data with their arrows. The wireless signal also apparently has an impact on tea leaves. WiFi is amazing!

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One unhappy customer in Japan has turned to the “My Starbucks Idea” site, which allows users to submit and vote on ideas that will improve Starbucks. Here is a screen capture of the submitted idea, which begs Starbucks to provide free wireless internet access at its store locations in Japan:

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the idea will have much chance of succeeding. At the time of this blog post, it had a score of minus 30.

[hat tip to Maurie]

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PBS takes a look at how Japanese and American scientists and engineers are studying techniques to protect coastal areas from tsunami damage:

Although there were several notable cases of towns with breakwaters and seawalls suffering heavy damage on March 11th, researchers still believe that both methods can be helpful. It seems that breakwaters do indeed weaken the force of tsunamis, and things could have been a lot worse if some of those towns had absolutely no breakwater. But, as March 11th demonstrated, it is a mistake to only count on protective barriers. There also needs to be a good evacuation plan in place, and people need to follow it.

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A super computer developed by a state-funded research project has retained its No. 1 ranking as the world’s fastest computer in computing speed:

The supercomputer, nicknamed “K” and being developed jointly with Fujitsu Ltd. at the institute’s facility in Kobe, retained the top post, which it first captured in June as the first Japanese computer to do so in seven years.

The feat came amid intense competition as countries race to develop ever-faster supercomputers to conduct simulations in research and development in the fields of science, industry and military.

“K” draws upon the Japanese word “kei” for 10 to the 16th power, with the word representing the system’s performance goal of 10 petaflops. One petaflop is the equivalent of 1,000 trillion operations per second.

This computer project was all over the news in 2009, when DPJ politician Ren Ho suggested that the Japanese government should save taxpayer money by slashing budgets for scientific research、and that it wasn’t really worth it for Japan to build the world’s best super computer.

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Here is a great work of citizen journalism that really deserves attention (it’s from August, but wasn’t really widely noticed at the time):

The ‘apocalyptic’ media frenzy post Fukushima which displaced the real disaster story and horrific loss of life wrought by the earthquake & tsunami, sickened Japanese born Mari Shibata. Along with WORLDbytes volunteers she investigates the fear factor. Why did a nuclear incident affecting only a small area fuel global meltdown stories? In an interview with the Director of the Science Media Centre we learn of news values shaped by a concern to terrify people, journalists removed from stories for being too measured and scientists accused of lying. Granted unique access to Oldbury, the oldest nuclear power station in the world we learn how seriously safety is taken and due to fears of terrorism post 9/11 its tragic shut down to visitors. Through talking to relatives in Japan we learn of the progress being made to clear up the real mess made by a natural disaster, a story neglected by the Western media.

Todd Kreider at the NBR forums has typed up a transcript of the interview with Fiona Fox of the Science Media Center (starts at 8:55 in the video):

Fox’s job is to have her staff compile a list of top scientists who the BBC and others can interview. She says that she compiled a list for the tsunami and earthquake stories but 24 hours later the only ﾀuestions journalists asked were about the Fukushima reactors.

“It seemed like there was an agenda set by the editors. And later on when I started to reflect on this and talked to journalists off the record and asked ‘Why was there such a massive desire for *that* scare story when you already had a terrible scare story?’ It wasn’t as if we were asking them to cover the good news and not the bad news. There is plenty of bad news. One or two of them were very open with me and said, ‘Fiona, our editors think there is something uniquely terrifying about radiation. There is something unique to that word that has the capacity to terrify people.’ “

“And at that moment you have to pause for a moment and think ‘My goodness, what a strange set of news values: what justifies your – the amount of coverage – is what your editors feels terrifies people.’ There are some more sophisticated explanations for why these news values set in, but I think the one you really have to question is the one that says, ‘Because you couldn’t see it, because it is uniquely terrifying, therefore we felt compelled to cover it.’ And on that, I just beg to differ. I beg to differ that that is morally justifiable as a news value.”

Skipping ahead to about 13:40 in the video:

” what you really, really need at times like this is the *real* experts, the people who really know what they are talking about. And the Science Media Center’s job is to line up people who know about radiation, who know about the effects on humans, the effects on the environment and soils and food, etc. And we lined them all up and without exception there were all giving quite measured…

They said that this is a very, very serious incident but in terms of it being a threat even to people in Tokyo, never mind to people in Glasgow, they were expressing time after time that this threat was very, very, very, very small. And they were all dismayed that the world’s media was focusing on the threat of radiation which they thought was very very small for people outside the exclusion zone…

Fox again from 16:30 adds that many journalists told the Science Media Center that their editors would say, “So what are the apologists (nuclear scientists) saying today?” in response to their daily press conferences. She points out the wide variety of experts were on the list since nuclear includes so many sub areas. Fox adds that no scientist was from the nuclear industry and were scientists writing in top journals.

This is maybe the most damning quote:

Fox:　”The way that this was covered was wrong. I feel confident in saying that because of how many journalists felt uneasy about this. I know of journalists who were taken off this story because what they were writing was too measured and that’s in a really significant, major news room in this country.”

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A reporter gives a demo of NTT Docomo’s upcoming Cloud Automatic Translation Service:

They plan to offer real time translation of Japanese to and from English, Mandarin Chinese, or Korean.　 Right now, it’s only ready for English and Japanese – 80% recognition, as opposed to the 20% recognition that it could do back in May. According to the Nikkei, they are recruiting 400 smart phone users to test the service. NTT hopes to fully launch it some time next year.　

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Former Olympus CEO Michael Woodford has come forward with accusations about very shady dealings that took place at his previous employer:

He raised questions about the size of payments made by Olympus in four deals between 2006 and 2008.

Among them is the $1.92 billion acquisition of British medical-instruments company Gyrus Group and the $687 million paid to an adviser on the purchase.

The fee works out to more than a third of the total purchase price, much higher than the one or two percent normally charged.

Olympus has denied any wrongdoing and on Wednesday said its total payments to advisers included the redemption of preference shares when they became available.

It said it paid about $244 million in return for advisory work on the acquisition, including around $177 million in Gyrus preferred shares issued to the adviser. It did not release the name of the advisory firm.

But when Olympus later bought back the preferred shares, their value had risen to $620 million, the company said.

The total combined figure is almost double that quoted by chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa in Tuesday’s Nikkei newspaper in which he said Olympus “paid commissions of about 30 billion yen” to the advisers.

Woodford claims he was fired because he demanded that those involved with the deal explain why such a ridiculously large sum of money was paid to a mysterious fund in the Cayman Islands:

Of equal concern to Mr Woodford was the identity of the adviser, listed in the documents as Axes Americas, a US-based securities firm, and the related Axam Investments, a Cayman Islands-registered fund overseen by Axes that received the payments from Olympus.

“I felt very uncomfortable because the amount of monies paid to parties completely unknown were so huge,” said Mr Woodford in a video interview with the FT on Monday.

Neither Axes nor Axam were mentioned in public announcements related to the Gyrus deal. According to a review of the acquisition by PwC, Axam was struck from the Cayman Islands registry a few months after taking payment from Olympus, while Axes ceased operations and a man listed as its president effectively disappeared.

The FT called a telephone number for the company listed in an online business directory but found it had been disconnected.

Olympus insists that Woodford, a 30-year veteran of the company, was sacked because of a “clash of management styles.”

In a recent video interview with Bloomberg news, Woodford responded to speculation about a lawsuit from Olympus by saying that he would be “delighted” to see the issue go before a court.

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A couple videos of Japanese people trying to use Siri, a program for the iPhone 4s that is supposed to recognize spoken English:

Neither video uploader claims to be a master of English. Siri cannot understand them.

But don’t let these videos convince you that Siri absolutely cannot understand Japanese accents. Here’s a video of a Japanese guy who has a better command of the English language, and he apparently has no trouble getting his phone to understand what he’s saying:

[hat tip to Shii]

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Softbank’s monopoly on the iPhone is finally over. The iPhone 4s is now available for both Softbank and AU mobile networks.

For years, Japanese iPhone users have complained about how Softbank’s network coverage and speed sucks. Now that another carrier offers the exact same phone, one can conduct a proper side-by-side test to see if the complaints about speed were justified.

Here is a video uploaded by Gizmoto Japan. It shows a real-time speed test of two AU iPhones vs. two Softbank iPhones:

The test was conducted in Shibuya, an area of downtown Tokyo that should theoretically have better mobile coverage than almost anywhere.

The AU phones measured speeds of 1.68Mbps and 1.26Mbps. The Softbank phones scored 82.13kbps and 88.3kbps. Softbank’s speeds were laughably terrible.

Bonus video: Here’s a guy who is desperately trying to make Siri understand his grammatically incorrect English.

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A group of Japanese researchers has developed a gadget that can supposedly measure human stress levels:

“Previous research has shown that when you analyze the pulse-rate waveform using chaos theory, you can see whether it is maintaining a certain rhythm, and this relates to how healthy a person is. We have fine tuned that system so that this measurement can serve as a stress index. You may wonder if what we’re measuring is really stress. In this regard, the clearest indicator of stress is the amount of hormones in the blood. Data from such blood analysis has about a 70% correlation with the results of our software. So it’s probably fair to interpret this measurement as an indicator of stress, like a blood test.”

“I think many office workers harm their health by continuing to work while their stress level is high. We think it would be good if people could look after their health by assessing their own stress level.”

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The Yukiguni Maitake company has started airing commercials that inform consumers about its strict in-house safety tests, the results of which can be easily found on its website:

Singer Hiromi Go has been hired as a spokesman for the new advertising campaign. In the video, we are shown a clip of the TV commercial and a demonstration of how to check radiation test results.

Because mushrooms are particularly vulnerable to environmental pollution, the company has been conducting strict safety testing for years. The recent nuclear accident in Fukushima has heightened public fears about food contamination, so the company is conducting radiation tests on every “lot” of mushrooms that it ships and is making the test result data accessible on its homepage.

Every package of Yukiguni Maitake mushrooms has the following label:

Using a mobile phone, anyone can access safety testing data by reading the QR code. Alternatively, they can go to the company’s homepage and enter the lot number or the production date printed on the label (found in the red box in the example pic).

Downloadable data includes the amount of radioactive cesium detected, as well as the test results for a large number of other potentially dangerous substances, such as pesticides and heavy metals.

The ability to scan a package and see its radiation data before buying it is a stroke of marketing brilliance. Even if other companies are selling mushrooms from areas that have passed government mandated radiation tests, worried consumers will probably feel more comfortable buying Yukiguni’s products.

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Unfortunately, it seems that quite a few of them were faulty. The National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan randomly selected nine different low cost radiation measuring devices that were being sold via online shops. All were apparently made in China, and all were being sold for less than 100,000 yen. All of them failed accuracy tests.

The exact models tested were as follows:

• AK2011



• BS2011+



• DoseRAE2 PRM-1200



• DP802i



• FJ2000



• JB4020



• RAY2000A



• SW83



• SW83a

All had serious problems with accuracy. Some displayed inaccurately high readings, while others were unable to correctly measure radiation levels below 0.06 microsieverts. In one test involving radioactive cesium, a device measured radiation at 30% lower than the actual value.

Consumers weren’t the only ones duped into buying equipment that doesn’t work. According to the Mainichi, Tokyo authorities have been using seventy DoseRAE2 PRM-1200′s to conduct tests of radiation levels in the air.

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A reporter for Nikkan Spa gives us a demonstration of a fake “iPhone 5″ that was purchased in China:

It looks very similar to the legit iPhone 3 and iPhone 4, but it has some quality issues. The touch screen doesn’t respond well to fingers, so it comes with a stylus.

It also supposedly has support for two SIM cards.

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Japan’s National Police Agency has concluded that a July 10th cyberattack on its website was likely the work of angry Chinese nationalists:

Access to the NPA website was temporarily interrupted on the night of July 10 through the early hours of the following day as the apparent number of users accessing the website surged to about 20 times the normal level, the NPA said, adding that no data was breached.Through the International Criminal Police Organization, or Interpol, the NPA asked the Chinese side to determine those involved in the act, it said.The NPA said there was writing on an Internet message board in China calling for attacks on the NPA website. The message referred to an incident in which Japanese Air Self-Defense Force fighter jets scrambled in response to the flight of a Chinese reconnaissance plane near the disputed Senkaku Islands, it said.

The website of Japan’s Finance Ministry experienced a cyber attack in July 12th, which seems to have been organized on the same Chinese message board.

An Asahi Shimbun editorial recently pointed out that the Japanese government has not been giving much attention to this very serious issue:

In sharp contrast to many Western countries that have been steadily expanding their budgets for research and development efforts to enhance cyber security, Japan has cut such spending by nearly 50 percent in the past five years.

This year’s defense white paper featured security threats in cyberspace for the first time.

It is obvious that the Japanese government needs to step up its efforts with a sense of urgency to make more effective responses to the problem.

Needless to say, Japan should focus on strictly defensive efforts in responding to the cyber menace to its security.

Japan should try to build sturdy systems for monitoring and defense by tapping available advanced technologies. Then, it should use these systems to strengthen cooperation with other countries and thereby play a leading role in the global battle against cyber attacks. With a strong commitment to these ambitious goals, the government should pour energies and resources into helping establish necessary international rules.

That’s a duty that Japan, as a major information technology power, has to undertake.

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As rioters spread destruction in London, the Japanese media is focusing on the fact that Sony’s sole warehouse in Britain has been looted and burned:

During the BBC’s coverage of the incident, one eyewitness claimed he saw looters carrying off “loads of Sony stuff, like Wii consoles.”

As one might expect, this will probably result in some shortages of Sony products:

“There will likely be some impact on deliveries,” said Yoko Yasukochi, a spokeswoman at the Japanese electronics and entertainment conglomerate in Tokyo.

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A news report about how data from mobile phones is being used to analyze the movement of people after a major disaster:

According to the report, NTT Docomo’s mobile phones have a “hidden feature” that sends location information to the company every hour. This allows Docomo to track the location of its customers.

Here is a graphic that shows how a large number of Docomo customers were stranded in Tokyo at 3:00AM on March 12th, after the earthquake had forced all major train lines to halt service:

Combined with data about each customer’s home address, Docomo can figure out which evacuation routes would be most crowded. This valuable information could be used to help authorities distribute emergency supplies or deploy extra buses to help people return home.

Docomo says that the data is sorted in a way that protects the exact identity of every customer.

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Diginfo shows us the newest generation of the Jet Hitter, a batting machine that makes a baseball float in midair:

“People have used a soft toss batting tee or a batting tee to practice baseball, but since the ball comes at a 45 degree angle when soft toss batting, batters get into the habit of pulling the ball when they bat. Yet they do not get the feeling of really hitting when they use a batting tee. We worked with Meiji University and came up with this idea after we experimented a lot based on the concept, “What if the ball is floating?” This allows a person to practice by themselves, hit at a wide angle, and another major feature is that the ball wobbles a little, so it trains the batter to concentrate, so overall the system has been highly appreciated.”

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A video shows what it’s like to ride Fuji-Q Highland’s Takabisha, the world’s steepest roller coaster (a 141 foot drop at 121 degrees):

And here’s a time lapse video of it being built:

Development and construction of the roller coaster cost about 3 billion yen (37 million dollars).

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Researchers at Showa University have modified a love doll to create a realistic robot patient that will help train dentists:

The main features of the new robot are a silicone skin and mouth lining by Orient Industry, a maker of love dolls. The tongue and arms each have two degrees of freedom, and the robot overall has ten, enabling it to make natural movements, like shaking its head and choking.

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An Asahi TV reporter visits North Korea and films some surprising things:

The report mostly focuses on luxuries offered to foreign tourists and the technological and economic development of North Korea. We are shown:

• A facial massage that is popular among Chinese tourists.
• A North Korean waitress texting somebody on her mobile phone. In addition to text messages and photos, her phone can send and receive video calls. There are now 530,000 mobile phones being used in North Korea, enough for about 2% of the country’s population.
• Prepaid foreign currency cash cards can be used at some shops in Pyongyang.
• They visit a huge ostrich farm. Ostriches are being raised as a food source, but their egg shells and skin are also used to make products for export. The farm is a big deal in North Korea, and Kim Jong-il even took Chinese leaders on a special tour of it so he could show off the DPRK’s economic prosperity. (During the early days of the farm project, they thought that osriches needed to wear clothing in winter, but now they realize that the birds have no problem with cold weather.)
• At a new luxury hotel built for Chinese tourists, the employees are kind of shy.
• There is a special train that travels between Beijing and Pyongyang four times a week. The journey takes 26 hours. From the window of the train, one can observe propaganda signs praising Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un.

This news report gives us a picture of the comfortable lives enjoyed by North Korea’s small elite, but it doesn’t mention how the situation faced by the rest of the population. The rich are enjoying mobile phones and cash cards in restaurants full of food, but people in the countryside are on the verge of starvation. According to the AFP, the North Korean government has recently cut rice rations for the poor:

“The lowest I heard was 150 grammes per person per day, and I even heard that in Pyongyang the rations are cut to 200 grammes per person per day.”

Diplomats say the rations have been halved over the past 18 months. One hundred grammes of rice produces about 250-350 calories a day, experts said.

Zellweger said she had seen “a lot more malnourished children” on recent travels around the country.
“You see more people out in the fields and on the hillsides digging roots, cutting grass or herbs. So there are signs that there is going to be a crisis.”

Video footage filmed in secret and recently smuggled out of North Korea shows malnourished soldiers and young children caked in filth begging in markets.

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You may soon be able to give yourself a hug, thanks to Sense-Roid, a new invention from the same folks who brought us the creepy kiss transmission device:

“There are pressure sensors throughout the whole mannequin-type device, and when they sense an embrace, they activate artificial muscles in the jacket. It can also reproduce the feeling that the wearer is being rubbed on the back. If you rub it on the back then the rear pressure sensors detect it is being rubbed. There is a matrix of vibration motors on the back of the jacket, and the motors in the same position as you are rubbing vibrate, to give a feeling of having your own back rubbed.”

“When people embrace, if their counterpart is a stranger, they probably don’t get much of a good feeling from it. If it is a lover then they likely get a very nice feeling of security and satisfaction. We think that tactile communications like an embrace has a varied effect depending on the relationship with the other party. Thinking along those lines, we wondered what kind of feelings people would have if they could hug themselves, the person they have the closest relationship to, and so we made this.”

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A state-owned train company in China wants to obtain U.S. patents for the technology used in its CRH380A bullet train. Some in Japan are annoyed to hear this, since the train is pretty much a copy of Japan’s Hayate bullet train. The Chinese, however, insist that they’ve made changes to the Japanese design:

“The results of their initial assessment were positive, which means China can apply for patents in the United States,” he said, admitting that patent applications were being prepared. “The train’s technologies are rooted in Japanese technologies, but the CRH380A train is no longer the train imported from Japan years ago.”

Ma provided a detailed analysis of the parts imported, design concepts and how technology and design were related, and argued that adjustments on (1) the truck, (2) the train head design and (3) the train hull have enabled the train to run at a speed of 380 kph.

The Yomiuri speculates that obtaining patents in America, Brazil, Russia and Europe could be a step towards selling this “Chinese” technology to foreign high speed rail projects:

China has developed high-speed railway cars through technology licenses from companies in Japan, Germany, France and Canada. Under the licensing agreements, China’s use of the expertise was to be limited to domestic application, an informed source said.

The Chinese government has said its high-speed rail technology was developed completely on its own, with an official at the Railways Ministry saying, “We adopted it [the technology from overseas], digested it, absorbed it and innovated based on it.”

Of the places where Beijing has filed for the patents, the United States, Brazil and Russia have high-speed railway development projects. With the patent filings, China is apparently trying to gain an advantage in the competition to win sizable contracts.

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An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle crash-landed on top of one of the reactor buildings at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant:

The vehicle, known as a T-Hawk, is about 7.9 inches (20 centimeters) in diameter and looks like a small jet pack. It is used primarily by the military for reconnaissance work in dangerous areas. It has been used at Fukushima since mid-April to assist in damage assessment.

The company said that there did not appear to be any damage from the impact of the vehicle, with no fire or smoke observed following the accident. It was not known if the vehicle was damaged.

TEPCO spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said that due to its small size and weight, the drone was “unlikely to crash through the rooftop and damage the reactor.”

The drone had made several successful trips of the reactor in the past. Some images it filmed back in April can be found on YouTube.

Extended footage of the crash can be found here.

And here is a video that explains how the drone works:

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When the March 11th tsunami struck the city of Kesennuma, many large fishing boats were swept ashore and grounded. Now, as these video clips show, a giant crane is being used to lift the boats return them to the sea:

So huge are the ships that moving them back to the sea has not been attempted in more than three months. Many have been propped up with metal beams so they won’t fall over.

Now ship owners have banded together to jointly negotiate a contract with a logistics company to move five of the vessels in a deal insurers have agreed to cover. Even with a group discount it will cost around £620,000 to move each ship.

[...]

Earlier this week, two towering cranes hoisted the 400-tonne Akane Maru No 1, a deep-sea fishing boat, about 30 feet off the ground from where it had been tossed by the wave.

The cranes gently lowered it onto a huge trolley in primary colours that looks like a super-sized Lego creation. It was the start of what would be a three-day operation organised by Penta-Ocean Construction.

The 192-tyre trolley – normally used for transporting equipment such as train carriages – then slowly rolled toward the quay. Yesterday, the cranes lifted the boat up and into the water.

After some repairs, the Akane Maru No?1 should be ready to start fishing in August, ship owner Hirohito Ikeda said.

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“Nanikore” visits a souvenir shop in Nikko where the owner has built a “running machine” for her dog:

The dog, an American Pit Bull Terrier named Teroru, seems to love the machine. Even after going on an hour-long walk with his master, Teroru wants to be taken to his treadmill to continue exercising. Sometimes he uses it for several hours straight. Because the machine is powered by his own walking, he doesn’t require human supervision. He can stop whenever he gets tired.

Related link: It seems that some companies actually sell motorized dog treadmills.

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TokyoTek has uploaded this video of the very awesome OLED globe that is now on display at Tokyo’s Miraikan museum:

The “Geo-Cosmos” is made from over ten thousand Mitsubishi OLED panels:

Hanging 18 meters from the floor, the globe is an aluminum sphere covered with 10,362 OLED panels, each measuring 96 x 96 millimeters. Mitsubishi Electric used its scalable OLED technologies to create the globe, which replaces a globe comprising light emitting diodes (LEDs) to commemorate the museum’s 10th anniversary. The globe will display scenes of clouds and other visions of the earth taken from a meteorological satellite. Projections will feature resolution of more than 10 million pixels, about 10 times greater than that of the LED display.

You can read more about the project on the Miraikan Tsunagari Project homepage.

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Sega has created what is sure to be one of the strangest video games ever invented. It is – quite literally – a pissing contest:

“First, an infrared sensor detects when a person approaches, and changes the screen to the game ready display. Next, microwaves hit the stream of urine when the person urinates, and it reads the reflected microwaves to detect the speed of the urine stream. The volume is then calculated by the speed and duration of the urination.”

Since the volume of urine is calculated from the speed, the average amount can also be calculated. In this demonstration the volume is measured for a game to display individual rankings, and Sega are now developing a game for players to compete against people who have used the toilet before.

“We are looking to drinking and eating establishments to install this game first. The advertising screen in it can be refreshed if it is JPEG data, for example, if the bar is being used for a party after a wedding it could show the faces of the bride and groom. That would be pretty funny if the faces of the bride and groom appeared in the toilet. Customers are coming up with quite a few interesting ways to use it.”

Hopefully, within a year, half the bars in Tokyo will be equipped with this amazing device.

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A retired man in Hyogo prefecture has built a miniature replica of a Hankyu Railway train car:

He is using it as a garage for his motorcycle. When he uses a remote control to open the garage door, it plays a railroad crossing sound.

The man says his next project will be a miniature Sky Tree.

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A viral video of Japanese news report showing a remove-controlled floating sphere:

The orb was developed by the Japanese military, as this top YouTube comment explains:

Max Speed is about 40mph.

Almost all parts can be found in Akihabara, Japan.

It has been developed by technology research section of Japanese Self Defense Forces.

It took one & a half year to be developed.

Looks like it’s only a matter of time before your nightmares about being stalked by floating robot drones will finally come true!

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A few days ago, a YouTube user named asuperdry began to upload video clips of radiation measurements in Kashiwa city, a suburb of Tokyo. In several clips he places a dosimeter on the ground and records radiation in of over 5 microsieverts per hour, a level far higher than one would expect in an area that is about 200 kilometers south of Fukushima:

Here’s what he says in the video description:

Another beautiful day in Japan, I am 135 miles / 220 Km south of Fukushima, on the outskirts of the Tokyo area. It is Tuesday, June 7th, as you can see in the video, I just walk outside of my house and …. radiation. The air is not dangerous but the ground is. The radiation is much higher in low lying areas and the government here is desperately trying to keep it quiet.

And this is what he claims in another video:

This whole area for miles around is just blanketed with radiation. The streets and most of the concrete and side walks are with-in normal radiation levels. Its the soil and vegetation as well as anywhere there is dirt and debris and especially around all drains and gutters and in low lying areas.

Is there truth to the video uploader’s claim? Has the area been blanketed by high levels of radiation? Let’s examine a few facts:

1. He is using a DP802i dosimeter. As the Tokyo Radiation Levels Facebook group has pointed out, this particular model of dosimeter is known for giving inaccurate readings: “I can’t find much info on this DP802i device but it appears to be wildly inaccurate or you need to leave it there for a long time to get a proper reading. At the 1:50 mark you can see that the white radex geiger counter sitting on top of the thorium mantels is measuring ~2.1 uSv/h. The Dp802i sitting to the left and further away is measuring about 9.3 uSv/h. It is of course not possible to get such a higher reading from further away with less surface area. I think the algorithms of the device is over compensating for the rate of change or it needs a very long time to get a proper idea of dose.”
2. The Japanese government is not the only source for information about radiation. Japanese bloggers have been conducting their own radiation measurements in Kashiwa. There are also threads on 2channel in which users in Kashiwa post radiation readings. Another Youtuber even brought her geiger counter to Kashiwa and filmed her own measurement video. Radiation measurements have been taken in the air, on the ground in parks, in flowerbeds, and on the streets. Nobody has recorded anything remotely close to 5.77 microsieverts per hour.

So lots concerned Japanese people throughout the Kanto region and even in asuperdry’s city have been making their own radiation measurements, none of which match the numbers in his video. They must be wrong, or all Japan must be in on the conspiracy to cover up the truth and trick poor foreigners into thinking this country is safe….

Update: An in-depth study of radiation levels in Northern Kanto has found that the area around Kashiwa does have higher radiation levels than other areas. However, it is low enough not to be a threat to human health.

[hat tip to Enosp]

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]]> http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/06/10/youtube-radiation-video-5-77-microsieverts-per-hour-recorded-in-tokyo-suburb/feed/ 28 http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/29/beer-can-pouring-perfection/ http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/29/beer-can-pouring-perfection/#comments Sun, 29 May 2011 06:21:48 +0000 James http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=21491

A Japanese news program introduces a new product that helps people pour canned beer:

It’s Beer Hour, a handy beer server created by the Takara Tomy. By attaching the device to a can of beer, one can achieve the perfect balance of beer and head when pouring into a glass.

There is a switch on the side of the device that turns on a spinning mixer. When the switch is off, normal beer will come out. When the switch is on, you’ll get foam.

The device is available at Amazon.co.jp for 2,800 yen.

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]]> http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/29/beer-can-pouring-perfection/feed/ 15 http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/28/booming-demand-for-geiger-counters/ http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/28/booming-demand-for-geiger-counters/#comments Sat, 28 May 2011 04:35:38 +0000 James http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=21481


FTV reports about how the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident has caused a worldwide increase in demand for geiger counters:

At a factory in the United States, large orders for geiger counters have come in from a variety of countries. The customer board shows that orders are being filled from China, Kenya, Belgium, Singapore, Israel, Austria, and Spain.

Many Japanese also want to own their own radiation measuring devices. Electronics stores in Akihabara are struggling to keep up with demand for geiger counters, many of which sell for over $600 each. One shop owner says he’s sold over a hundred geiger counters since April, and expects that an incoming shipment of 200 will sell out soon.

In Fukushima prefecture, the government is distributing geiger counters to all 1,169 public schools. Supplies are limited, so each school receives just one counter each.

A reporter visits a kindergarten in Fukushima that has purchased its own geiger counter. They measure 0.4 microsieverts per hour of radiation inside the school building, and over 3 microsieverts per hour outside. According to a government survey conducted in April, the highest observable level of radiation on the grounds of that kindergarten was 5.3 microsieverts per hour. Using the geiger counter, the school will make sure that children do not go outside to play on days when radiation is relatively high.

Several weeks ago, the Japanese government raised the acceptable maximum annual radiation dosage standard for children from 1 millisieverts to 20 millisieverts (about 3.8 microsieverts a day). The decision outraged many parents, who feared that the new standard meant that their children would be exposed to unhealthy levels of radiation. The Education Ministry initially responded by stating that there was non intention to allow 20 millisieverts of exposure, and that it actually expected that exposure to children would not exceed 10 millisieverts of radiation a year. On Friday, the government took an even stronger stance, stating that they would do their utmost to ensure that annual exposure did not exceed 1 millisievert of radiation.

The report closes by noting that the Fukushima prefectural government has announced a plan to carry out long term health checks on all 2 million of its residents.

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]]> http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/28/booming-demand-for-geiger-counters/feed/ 4 http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/26/docomo-cloud-automatic-translation-service/ http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/26/docomo-cloud-automatic-translation-service/#comments Thu, 26 May 2011 02:30:12 +0000 James http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=21432

NTT Docomo is developing an automatic translation service:

“The Cloud Automatic Translation Service, demoed on both Android Smartphone and Tablets, is a dream comes true to. Working both ways for the emitter of the call and the person who’s receiving it, this service will translate live what you are saying from Japanese into English or English to Japanese without you to really have to care of what’s really going one. Further more, this service will also give you the exact translation of what you just said in both language on your smartphone screen to make sure that what you said has been clearly translated or not. Basically in a near future you will be able to call anyone in Japan and get instant translation without even noticing it and without having to bother learning Japanese.”

It might work fine for a the standard phrases shown in the video, but I doubt it will ever work well enough to live up to optimistic hype about never having to learn foreign languages. Still, it’s a pretty interesting concept.

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]]> http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/26/docomo-cloud-automatic-translation-service/feed/ 6 http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/22/ultra-high-definition-tv/ http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/22/ultra-high-definition-tv/#comments Sun, 22 May 2011 01:21:48 +0000 James http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=21358

This looks pretty damn awesome:

This 85″ LCD display has a resolution of 7,680 x 4,320 pixels, which is equivalent to 16 times the resolution of HDTV, allowing for the display of incredibly detailed, high-quality images.

In the past the only way to show the Ultra High Definition broadcast at full resolution was using a projector, but due to Sharp’s UV2A LCD technology, which allows for an unprecedented level of precision when controlling the alignment of liquid crystal molecules in an LCD structure, Sharp have been able to create a flawless 33megapixel display.

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]]> http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/22/ultra-high-definition-tv/feed/ 7 http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/11/japanese-maid-modifies-a-furby/ http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/11/japanese-maid-modifies-a-furby/#comments Tue, 10 May 2011 22:40:54 +0000 James http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=21253

Amano Ai (aka Julie Watai) rewires a Furby:



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]]> http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/11/japanese-maid-modifies-a-furby/feed/ 23 http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/06/new-york-decides-on-japanese-taxi-cabs/ http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/06/new-york-decides-on-japanese-taxi-cabs/#comments Thu, 05 May 2011 23:48:58 +0000 James http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=21218

New York City has decided to convert all of its taxi cabs into Nissan NV200′s:




The Nissan van will join New York City’s taxi fleet beginning in 2013, and be the official taxi of New York for the following 10 years. All taxis currently on the road, including the city’s newer hybrid cabs, will be phased out by 2018.

As part of the deal, Nissan is also providing the city with 100 plug-in electric Nissan Leaf cars to be used as test vehicles by taxi owners interested in going all-electric. Nissan will also install charging stations within the city for easy accessibility.

The NV200 vans themselves will be equipped with a 2.0-liter 4-cylinder power train, and the option exists to convert them into plug-in electric vehicles. That’s not surprising considering New York is considering eventually making its fleet of over 13,000 taxis all-electric.

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]]> http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/06/new-york-decides-on-japanese-taxi-cabs/feed/ 5 http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/04/gopan-turns-rice-into-bread/ http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/04/gopan-turns-rice-into-bread/#comments Wed, 04 May 2011 06:10:05 +0000 James http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=21190
Back in November 2010, Sanyo had to stop taking orders for its Gopan rice-to-bread machine because demand for the product far outstripped their factory’s manufacturing capabilities.

They’ve now upgraded their production facilities to a point where they can start delivering new Gopan machines to stores:

The Gopan takes rice, sugar, and yeast and turns it into bread through an automated process that takes about 4 hours.

In the above TV clip, a famous chef shows their reporter some creative ways to eat the rice bread. Since it’s made from rice, it is apparently goes well with natto, soy sauce, and other Japanese food. You can even make bread sushi:



At the end of the report, they show us an alternative to the Gopan. The Kome-Pan is a cooking kit that lets children turn leftover rice into dough, which can be put into an oven and turned into bread. It may not be automated, but it is many times cheaper than the Gopan.

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]]> http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/04/gopan-turns-rice-into-bread/feed/ 14 http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/04/kiss-transmission-device/ http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/04/kiss-transmission-device/#comments Wed, 04 May 2011 02:53:24 +0000 James http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=21187

Diginfo shows us a “kiss transmission device” that is being developed by the Kajimoto Laboratory at the University of Electro-Communications:

“This device is for communications within the mouth, in other words, the goal is to obtain the feeling of kissing.”

“If you take one device in your mouth and turn it with your tongue, the other device turns in the same way. If you turn it back the other way, then your partner’s turns back the same way, so your partner’s device turns whichever way your own device turns.”

[...]

“For example, if you have a popular entertainer use this device and record it, that could be hugely popular if you offer it to fans.”

“The elements of a kiss include the sense of taste, the manner of breathing, and the moistness of the tongue. If we can recreate all of those I think it will be a really powerful device.”

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]]> http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/04/kiss-transmission-device/feed/ 13 http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/04/07/video-how-sodium-silicate-water-glass-stopped-fukushimas-radioactive-water-leak/ http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/04/07/video-how-sodium-silicate-water-glass-stopped-fukushimas-radioactive-water-leak/#comments Thu, 07 Apr 2011 01:30:30 +0000 James http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=20765

Over the weekend, workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant struggled to plug of a crack that was causing highly radioactive water to leak into the Pacific Ocean. After a few failures, they finally succeeded by injecting large amounts of sodium silicate (“water glass”/”liquid glass”) into the leaking storage pit.

Japanese TV news programs have explained the situation with small demonstrations of sodium silicate leak-plugging power. The following clip combines two such demonstrations, from ATV and TBS:

As you can see, when enough sodium silicate is injected into water, it solidifies very quickly and stops leaking.

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]]> http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/04/07/video-how-sodium-silicate-water-glass-stopped-fukushimas-radioactive-water-leak/feed/ 2 http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/04/05/dog-seatbelt/ http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/04/05/dog-seatbelt/#comments Tue, 05 Apr 2011 01:33:20 +0000 James http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=20729

If you have a dog and worry about driving safely with your pet hiding in your car, you might want to get the seatbelt harness that is introduced on this Japanese TV show:

Similar products are being sold on Amazon.co.jp and Amazon.com. The product shown in the video might be produced by a Japanese company, but it looks like companies in other countries have had similar ideas.

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]]> http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/04/05/dog-seatbelt/feed/ 4 http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/04/04/using-google-earth-to-visualize-japan-earthquake-damage/ http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/04/04/using-google-earth-to-visualize-japan-earthquake-damage/#comments Sun, 03 Apr 2011 23:42:20 +0000 James http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=20704 Professor Hidenori Watanave of Tokyo Metropolitan University’s Graduate School of System Design writes to inform us about two projects that use Google Earth to visualize the damage from the March 11th earthquake and tsunami:

1. Three-dimensional photo-overlays from “The Aftermath in Japan” by New York Times



Users can view 40 photographs from New York Timesusing google earth,
and compare sceneries before / after the earthquake. All photographs
are overlapped with three-dimensional geographical features. The
damage situation of the Sendai airport and the Fukushima nuclear power
plant and others can be understood three-dimensionally. And also, Google’s
imagery update of Japan is included, users can switch latest and past
satellite image by radio-buttons. We will add more photographs as much
as possible.

2. Traffic results information of Japan Earthquake from HONDA & TOYOTA


The traffic results information of the area of devastation of the
Japan Earthquake (daily update) by HONDA and TOYOTA are overlapped
with other geographical data. Available roads and other information
are overlapped, so users can understand the real situation of the area
of devastation easily. Two or more layers can be switching with check
boxes. Please wait for a while until contents are displayed because
the data size is large.

For more details about the project, you can check this site (Japanese).

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]]> http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/04/04/using-google-earth-to-visualize-japan-earthquake-damage/feed/ 0 http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/04/03/how-sand-compaction-piles-saved-tokyo-disneyland-from-earthquake-damage/ http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/04/03/how-sand-compaction-piles-saved-tokyo-disneyland-from-earthquake-damage/#comments Sun, 03 Apr 2011 02:29:01 +0000 James http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=20700

When the March 11th earthquake struck Japan, I was at Tokyo Disneyland. Inside the park, I saw absolutely no damage from the quake, but when I exited Disney and walked around the streets of Urayasu City, I saw quite a bit of cracked and damaged streets. The above photo, which I snapped in front of Maihama Station, demonstrates the effects of soil liquefaction:

The liquefaction left houses and power poles tilting in many areas.

Liquefaction occurs when saturated sandy ground, such as that found in reclaimed land and marshes, is loosened by a strong earthquake. The unconsolidated sand becomes like muddy water. This muddy water gushes up through cracks and opening in sidewalks and roads, and then drains away to leave the sand on the ground.

The latest earthquake caused ground subsidence of up to 50 centimeters, which destroyed underground water and sewerage pipes.

Reclaimed land usually stabilizes with time. Some areas along Tokyo Bay were reclaimed during the Edo period (1603-1867) and before World War II. However, the areas hit hardest by liquefaction during the March 11 earthquake had been reclaimed after the war with sediment taken from the seabed. In those areas, digging down a few meters will reveal a saturated sandy layer.



The Tokyo Disney Resort was also built on recently reclaimed land. Why did it not suffer from liquefaction?

The answer, as explained in this FTV news video, is sand compaction piling:

The sand compaction pile method, developed in Japan about 50 years ago, uses steel pipes to insert large amounts of compacted sand into the ground, strengthening relatively weak soil against liquefaction.



Sand compaction piles were placed under the Tokyo Disney Resort and Haneda Airport, and both survived the earthquake without suffering significant liquefaction damage.

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]]> http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/04/03/how-sand-compaction-piles-saved-tokyo-disneyland-from-earthquake-damage/feed/ 4 http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/03/29/live-updates-on-tokyos-electricity-usage/ http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/03/29/live-updates-on-tokyos-electricity-usage/#comments Mon, 28 Mar 2011 23:23:48 +0000 James http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=20587

With the Tokyo area suffering from a major power shortage, sites like Yahoo.co.jp have started publishing regular updates on the status of electricity usage. In addition, independent programmers have been using TEPCO’s power usage API to create a variety of mobile phone apps and websites.

Below are two of my favorite results of the API sharing.

Evangelion-style TEPCO Live Monitoring Page:




TEPCO – Power Usage Checker – Google Chrome Extension (Firefox users can get this instead)



Although the weather has become warmer over the last couple days, making use of electricity drop and blackouts unnecessary, it is only a temporary reprieve. The hot and humid days of summer will soon be upon Tokyo, and it will make the electricity demands of March look like nothing. This is far from over, so be sure to bookmark or install one of these electricity status pages/apps.

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]]> http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/03/29/live-updates-on-tokyos-electricity-usage/feed/ 16 http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/03/01/university-entrance-exam-questions-leaked-online/ http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/03/01/university-entrance-exam-questions-leaked-online/#comments Tue, 01 Mar 2011 03:45:07 +0000 James http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=19986

For the last couple days, the Japanese news media has been giving major coverage to a scandal involving the entrance examination for Kyoto University. Somebody was apparently able to sneak a mobile phone into the examination room and make a post on Yahoo asking users to help answer several Japanese-to-English translation questions.

It was initially thought that the perpetrator re-typed the questions into his/her mobile phone before sending them off to be put on the net, but one would have to capable of hyper-speed phone pad typing to pull that off. It seems more likely that a mobile phone camera was used. That would have made it a two person job: the test taker would take the photo of the exam question and would sent it to a helper a helper, who would then type out the posting on Yahoo.

In the video clip below, a FTV reporter demonstrates how one can cover the speaker of certain types of smart phones, allowing photographs to be taken without any audible shutter sound:


Some information from the Asahi Shimbun:

Questions from Kyoto University’s mathematics and English exams on Friday and Saturday were posted on Chiebukuro within minutes of the start of the tests. The poster, using the “aicezuki” ID, got answers from Internet users before the exams had finished.

The math exam was held Friday from 1:30 pm. to 3:30 p.m. The first posting came at 1:37 p.m. The sender wrote, “Please submit not only the answer, but also the calculations that are needed to come up with that answer.”

There were frequent exchanges between the sender and the respondents. In a text message, one individual asked, “How about my translation (of English composition)? I’m afraid the translation is too literal.” The sender answered, “Thank you.”

Because of the extremely quick posting of the first question, reporters asked Kyoto University officials whether it was possible that questions had been leaked before the exam.

Toshiyuki Awaji, the university’s executive vice president for education, said: “We cannot reveal how we store the questions because it is top secret information, but I can definitely say there was no way the questions could have leaked beforehand.”

Awaji said university officials realized that something was wrong at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday. The university received phone calls pointing to the postings on the Internet.

The English exam was held Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. During the exam, two postings from “aicezuki” were submitted, asking that passages be translated into English. One posting came seven minutes after the English exam began.

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]]> http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/03/01/university-entrance-exam-questions-leaked-online/feed/ 18 http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/02/26/self-checkout-meow/ http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/02/26/self-checkout-meow/#comments Sat, 26 Feb 2011 09:26:15 +0000 James http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=19956

“Nanikore” finds a supermarket in Wakayama prefecture where the self checkout machines make animal sounds instead of beeps:

They did it to entertain children. The self checkout machines make cat sounds, dog sounds, and sheep sounds.

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]]> http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/02/26/self-checkout-meow/feed/ 4 http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/02/23/irun-social-media-studio/ http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/02/23/irun-social-media-studio/#comments Tue, 22 Feb 2011 23:47:52 +0000 James http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=19930

Joseph Tame shows off the “World’s Most Advanced Mobile Social Media Studio” – the iRun – a device he will be wearing as he runs in the 2011 Tokyo Marathon:

The iRun features four iPhones on rotatable mounts, an iPad, and Android handset, three mobile Wi Fi routers, a four-in-one atmospheric monitor and a heart monitor – all to record his route round the 26-mile circuit.

A post on Tame’s website states: ‘This technology will allow me to broadcast live video on two cameras (using either skype or FaceTime to a local studio for re-broadcast), send live location/pace/heart rate data via Runkeeperon the iPhone, transmit temperature, COx/humidity/noise levels via a custom-made Android app – and do all of this while looking incredibly cool.’

Tame has admitted some of the features, such as the ‘wind turbine’, really a children’s fan, and ‘satellite dish’ on his helmet, actually a plastic bird-feeding dish, are just for decoration, but the rest of the equipment on the iRun is being used to good effect.

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]]> http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/02/23/irun-social-media-studio/feed/ 8 http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/02/18/bringing-streetcars-back-to-ginza/ http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/02/18/bringing-streetcars-back-to-ginza/#comments Fri, 18 Feb 2011 05:46:00 +0000 James http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=19870

Decades ago, streetcars were a common sight all over Tokyo. However, as car ownership increased, streetcars were seen as an annoying contributor to traffic jams and streetcar lines were shut down. Today, only the Toden Arakawa streetcar line and the Tokyu Setagaya tramway line remain.

However, as this report from “Bankisha” shows, streetcars are about to make a comeback in Tokyo:

This year’s Tokyo city budget includes funding for the construction of a new light rail transit (LRT) line, running from Ginza to the Harumi area of Chuo Ward.



A lot of new office and apartment buildings have been built in the area over the last decade, and existing mass transit cannot meet the demands of residents. A lot of people are annoyed with having to take long walks or wait a considerable time for buses.

The report mentions some advantages of streetcar/LRT lines:

• Tracks can be set up so that the streetcars can move forward regardless of automobile traffic.
• Because streetcars can be easily brought to a halt, it is not dangerous to run a streetcar within close proximity of another streetcar. During rush hour, many streetcars can follow closely behind each other on the same track.
• In the downtown area of the French city of Strasbourg, an LRT system has replaced automobile traffic. By restricting the automobile access to the area, it has beautified the city and reduced air pollution.
• LRT lines can be a very convenient for handicapped or elderly passengers. The LRT line in Toyama city runs low to the ground and close to boarding platforms. Passengers do not need to climb up stairs to board the car, and there are no large gaps on platforms that could cause trouble for wheelchairs or carts.
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