It’s been about seven months since that huge Tsunami hit Japan, wiping out businesses, cars, people and the Fukushima nuclear power station. However, a lot of stuff contained in the 18-mile radioactive exclusion zone remained undamaged, including some pretty usable cars. These can now be bought on the Japanese used car market. Extra limbs sold separately.
If the thought of waiting until the 2015 Rugby World Cup to visit Japan is less appealing right now, consider going there sooner, and for free, courtesy of the country’s tourism agency. The Japan Tourism Agency has announced it will fund airfares for 10 000 foreign travelers in an attempt to help the country’s plummeting tourism levels recover in the face of nuclear disaster.
Pro-whaling representatives from Japan, Iceland and some African and Caribbean nations, upped and left the room yesterday at a gathering of the International Whaling Commission. The topic they were touchy about was a proposal to create a sanctuary for whales in the South Atlantic. Guess walking out was a simple way to ensure the vote could not proceed?
If you take a little stroll down to your local market, you can pick up anything from a pair of Mikes (fake Nikes) to a pair of Maddibas (fake Adidas) to the best real fake Rolex you’ve ever seen. It’s now only a matter of time before you can pick up a new secretary, wife or girlfriend as well.
The girl pictured is actually a robot named Showa Hanako 2. She was originally developed as a tool for dentists looking to practice new procedures, but is now able to recognise voice commands, turn her head and open her mouth real wide! Before your mind ends up in the gutter, see the video as to why she’s designed like that.
Sometimes fellow human beings are just…awesome. As the Japanese government struggle to bring the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant under control due to a lack of people willing to go into the contaminated area, a group of pensioners have decided to step up. Why? They are willing to put their lives at risk to save younger people from radiation.
The nice thing about Pixar is that all of its movies make you feel warm and fuzzy inside. Charity helps people AND makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. With this in mind, Lee Unkrich, Pixar director, is letting you enjoy the indulgence of both, by auctioning off Pixar stuff for Japan aid.
Watch out for Japan in the next 100 years, because if this continual natural bombardment doesn’t galvanize a national stoicism, ingenuity and will to survive of epic proportions, then nothing will.
In what is quickly becoming a cosmic joke, the North East shore of Japan is expected to be struck by a tsunami in a matter of hours. An earthquake with a magnitude of 7,4 struck off the coast of Honshu, with local reporters in the North East of the country citing concern over an unusually strong aftershock.
What with radiation being the topic du jour at the moment (Google Japan), I thought it my civic duty to share this chart that shows very simply just how much radiation you’ll need to absorb before turning into a sludgy mass.
Zahrul Fuadi, 39, joins Tsutomu Yamaguchi as the second in a pair of the luckiest men in history.
Yamaguchi survived two atomic bombs, and Fuadi survived two killer tsunamis.
This is truly an amazing and compelling visual indication of the extent of the damage caused by the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan. Simply move the slider to compare before and after satellite images of the damage caused. It’s unbelievable.
Finally, some good news out of Japan! Imagine being a Japanese foreign student in America, having no way of knowing if your family on the other side of the world survived the tsunami that rocked the region last week, until you find a YouTube video, confirming their survival. It’s okay, I also had to wipe my eyes afterward.
Rescue robots have been deployed in the parts of of Japan worst affected by the massive earthquake and tsunamis that struck Friday. Robiticist Satoshi Tadoko is apparently leading a team from Tohoku Universityen route to Sendai with ‘a snakelike robot that can wriggle into debris to hunt for people.’
This is it – the footage from SKYNEWS that everyone is talking about – showing the most insane visuals of the tragic March 2011 earthquake in Japan. Starting with a solid wall of water out in the ocean, crashing into land and destroying everything in its path; visuals include entire villages getting flattened, aerial views […]
A magnitude 8.9 earthquake off the coast of Japan has triggered an immensely destructive tsunami at 14h46 local time. Footage has been shown of cars, ships and buildings being swept away in Onahama city. Officials said a wave as high as 6m could strike the coast.
I mean don’t get me wrong, I’d want a robot clone too, it’s just not totally clear why Henrik Scharfe, professor at Aalborg University, actually got one assembled by the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute in Japan. It’s ostensibly the first android with a beard, though, so yay science.
Ha! Yes. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), is looking at plans to send a humanoid robot to the International Space Station. Except by humanoid I mean it will look attempt to look sexy but end up being insanely creepy. Also, it’s going to post photos and text to Twitter.
I mean, yes, making dominos that trip each other without touching is probably a useless application of technology, but I figure this puts us one step closer to that weird hologram game from Star Wars, and I am for it.
Hey, remember the whole thunder/ice/volcano scenario in Iceland that cancelled a couple of European flights? Well a similar sort of deal went down in Japan on Sunday, between the Kagoshima and Miyazaki prefectures. Insert your own joke about Japan copying the west. Awesome photos follow.
Walt Disney will be clicking his heels in his grave. Japanese scientists have, by promoting the miscopying of DNA from mice to their progeny, randomly produced a mouse that sings very much like a bird. So what are we aiming for here? Mouse servants? Mouse message couriers? No, not even remotely.
Hatsune Mikue is an apparently ‘realistic’ holographic singing idol, massively popular in Japan. ‘Sure,’ you might say to yourself, ‘I’m big in Japan too,’ to which I say shut up, that wasn’t funny when your dad said it thirty years ago either. A thing that isn’t real sold out a 25,000-person stadium. This is how the world ends – with hologram designed by a company called ‘Crypton Future Media.’
Sumos…Big hands = big slaps Anyone who knows a thing or two about the intricacies and nuances of life as a Sumo Wrestler (pfft, who doesn’t?) will understand that the Sumo is a creature bred for power, weight, and a surprising degree of flexibility. But they’re definitely not bred for texting, or email, or any […]