Withdrawing its previous objection, Sony Corporation has agreed to pay a civil fine of 37.5 million yen (about US$375,000) to British authorities after the 2011 security breach of its online gaming network resulted in the leakage of millions of users’ personal information.
technology (Page 41)
There are certain trappings to the ideal vision of high school in Japan. A schoolhouse with surprisingly lenient rooftop access policies is one. A bevy of beautiful, earnest coed equipment managers cheering you on in the big game is another. And no set of rose-colored school days is complete without a kind, patient, nurturing school nurse.
If you’re past your teens, most of these are now out of reach. Contrary to what anime and TV dramas have shown us, Japanese educational institutes don’t even let their own students eat lunch on the roof, much less some random guy trying to turn back the clock. Putting your grown-man strength to use in youth athletics is similarly out of the question.
Thanks to a new website that launched this month, though, it’s not too late to have another chat with that school nurse.
A common image of the Japanese city is a concrete jungle of towering skyscrapers, tinting the night sky with the vibrant light from countless neon signs. But while you definitely can find those urban landscapes in downtown districts like Tokyo’s Shinjuku and Osaka’s Namba, take a short train ride into the suburbs and things can be very different.
My own apartment is in the most populous ward of Japan’s second biggest city, but one block away from the shopping arcade there are no sidewalks to be found, and street lights are few and far between. Add in a storm that cuts down visibility even more, and a walk home from the station can be a little unnerving.
Thankfully, PC and cell phone peripheral manufacturer Century has a solution for both problems with their light-up umbrella.
Meet the Powere Jacket MK3, an elaborate power suit clearly inspired by anime and hitting the market just in time to ride the wave of excitement over Guillermo Del Toro’s Kaiju Vs. Robots monster movie, Pacific Rim.
Though the power suit is far less impressive than the towering robots of the film, according to the below video, it lets you achieve all kinds of superhuman feats, including running at faster speeds, lifting heavy objects, and eating Cheetos without getting orange powder all over your fingers.
With the move to flash drives and cloud storage, CD trays may become a thing of the past, but don’t write yours off as a waste of space just yet. One Japanese Twitter user has found an excellent new use for his.
Google Street View seems to have its priorities all out of whack. While only just getting around to snapping the more remote areas of mainland Japan and having yet to cover the majority of Canada, Google sent out one intrepid employee to explore the completely abandoned Japanese island of Gunkanjima.
Regional dialects can be a powerful thing. Call out “partner” or “boyo” and I might not even realize you’re talking to me, but just say the word “dude” and you’ve got my complete attention.
Despite its small land mass, Japan’s language is filled with dialects, largely the result of mountains, not to mention centuries of civil war and travel restrictions, making it hard for people different from different areas to mix for much of the country’s history. Occasionally these unique speech patterns pop up in unexpected places, like when a coworker from Osaka stubs his toe in the office, or a drinking buddy from Akita’s accent starts showing after the fifth round of beers.
And now, you can hear Japanese dialects in your refrigerator.
Zima never really took off in the U.S.. Molson Coors’ clear malt beverage never even made it out of puberty in its home market, lasting just 15 years before the last Zima made for American consumption shipped in 2008.
In Japan though, it’s been a solid hit, particularly at clubs. The company recently asked the lofty question of whether the way human beings party is advancing at the same rate of other aspects of our modern lifestyle, and has decided to give it an evolutionary kick in the backside by creating a robot party band.
Cutting 50 percent of blue light while allowing 85 percent of visible light through, these new glasses are a must-have for any hardcore gamer or corporate desk slave.
Culture Japan’s Danny Choo gives us an inside look at one of Shinagawa’s automated bicycle vaults, proving once and for all that they are not operated by tiny elves working under illegal labour conditions.
Our favourite part is when the official explains that the vaults keep bikes safe from “the weather and pranksters.” Damn those pranksters, stealing our bikes! Not funny this time, you guys.
Calling all MacHeads! Can’t wait to get your hands on that ever-so-sexy Mac Pro introduced at the WWDC a few days ago? Not to worry, Amazon Japan has you covered, almost. Check out the New TUBELOR (black) from ideaco which can be yours for a mere 3,465 yen (about US$36). Though it doesn’t come with dual GPUs, PCI Express-based flash storage or high-performance Thunderbolt 2, with a little work on your part, this piece of just-as-sexy office hardware could have your co-workers drooling with envy, and, bump you to the top of your office’s cool colleague rankings.
As smartphones have become more popular and advanced, their battery lives have grown shorter and shorter and shorter.
As someone who uses a smartphone so much it’s probably causing me physical harm, I find mine needs charging sometimes twice a day. But when you’re out and about, it’s often hard to get enough time to sit down and plug it your phone in. And what if your external battery pack just died, but you desperately need to upload a photo of your lunch to Facebook? What happens then!?
Well, you could whip out your handy Resqcable power leacher!
Remember making all those mixed-tapes after the Walkman burst onto the scene at the beginning of the 80s (for those of you who grew up with all things digital, ask your dad)? Do you have any of them left? Perhaps there are a few stuffed away at the bottom of the sock drawer? If you still have all or part of that collection, Sanwa Direct can help. Their new 400-MEDI002 cassette to MP3 converter makes changing those old analog compilations to digital format cheap and easy.
In China this year, 7 June was the day prospective tertiary education hopefuls sat down to take the national university entrance examination. It’s a high stakes affair that has a great impact on each young person’s future.
Given the pressure these students and their family face there’s no question some will resort to cheating to get through. This year alone 9,120,000 people will take the exam. Considering those numbers, even if the cheating rate is only 0.1 percent, there is still a serious problem.
These photos, which surfaced recently on a Vipper forum, show a Showa Era newspaper’s predictions of what Tokyo would look like in their future. If Mark Twain can foresee the Internet nearly a hundred years in advance, surely a Showa Era newspaper can get a few predictions right? Let’s take a look:
Depending on the second language you’re trying to master, pronunciation is arguably the hardest aspect to conquer. The Japanese and English languages are no exception. Japanese, with its highly syllabic alphabet, often has a hard time accommodating the often chaotic nature of natural English pronunciation.
While a native English speaker’s tongue might stumble when trying to spit out makudonarudo (McDonald) smoothly the first few times our language allows us to pick it up with a little practice. Japanese English speakers have far more adversity trying to understand all the diminished sounds of a native English speaker casually uttering the name of the famous hamburger chain.
With that, NTT has revealed technology it’s working on that may one day automatically correct a Japanese person’s English pronunciation by editing the speed and rhythm while keeping the original speaker’s voice intact.
We’re not sure if the singularity has finally happened or if this Roomba vacuum cleaner’s owners are just particularly careless. Regardless, it appears the Roomba, sick of being trapped in the same dull house like an animal in a zoo, triumphantly escaped the confines of the home and made a mad 3-mph dash for freedom.
With over a billion registered users worldwide, Facebook is the king of online social networking services. In Japan, however, there are signs that its dominance is starting to crumble.
Facebook launched a Japanese version of its website in 2008. Initially, the platform experienced sluggish user growth as it struggled to compete with already established Japanese SNS sites produced by the likes of mixi, Mobage, and GREE. However, after well-known companies in Japan began to use Facebook as a marketing tool, it caught on with the general public and by the end of 2012 had 17.12 million users.
A mere five months later, however, that number has dropped to 13.78 million, a 19.5 percent drop in less than half a year.
With kids wanting to get their hands on tablets and smartphones rather than tops and jack-in-the-boxes, traditional toy makers are beginning to feel the heat. Although, it’s hard to imagine a perennial favorite like Lego go under, they aren’t taking any chances as indicated by a display at Sony Computer Science Labs in Tokyo during a recent open house.
The building block maker is partnering with the tech giant to implant some video game magic such as AI and DualShock control into their timeless colored cubes. But that’s not all. Sony Computer Science Labs are cooking up some wild stuff for the young and young at heart.
Founded at the opening of the 17th century, Kyoto’s Nishi Honganji Temple is one of the city’s most prestigious Buddhist institutions. As you might expect, it has some decidedly old-school touches, such as the length of rope woven out of strands of hair donated by female believers which was used to haul building materials for the structure.
But Nishi Honganji is no historical relic. As one of the most important temples in the widely-practiced True Pure Land School sect of Buddhism, large numbers of faithful look to the temple for religious guidance. To meet their needs, the temple has come up with a modern idea that belies its 400 years of history.
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