Year: 2008

Sleeping device

A Japanese guy has invented a new super-gadget that helps him to announce to the people sitting around him in which station he is planning to get off the train. Thanks to this gadget we will be able to sleep without having to worry about waking up because our fellow travelers will hopefully wake us up in our when we arrive to our destination.

Tren
This is the inventor trying his own thing.

And this is the first test recorded in a video. In the screen it says “I’m getting off in Mejiro station”. Cool, but it didn’t work! Nobody woke him up! Poor guy 🙂

Found at Pinktentacle and Interviews.jp

Society Tokyo

Earthquake risk areas in Tokyo

Post author By ageekinjapan
Post date October 20, 2008
4 Comments on Earthquake risk areas in Tokyo

I friend send me a report made by the Tokyo Government that analyzes potential earthquake risk in Tokyo. At the end of the report the conclusion is this map where the orange-red areas are the riskiest ones and the green-blue ones the safest. I live in a blue zone 🙂

Jishin
It looks like Tokyo east area is pretty dangerous.

In order to create these colored map many factors were analyzed. For example, the composition of the soil is one of the most important factors of danger when a earthquake occurs. This is how it is explained in one picture in the Tokyo Government report:

Jishin

The soil composition is one of the most important factors when calculating earthquake disaster risk. For example, in the Kobe earthquake in 1995, the most affected area was full of old house built on top of soil composed mainly by clay and sand. Another of the most important factors is the risk of fire. Areas with many concentrated wood houses are very risky. When a big earthquake disaster happens most of the people die burned. The fire risk is explained in the report with these nice-funny drawings:

Jishin

Jishin
This is the cover of the Tokyo Government report about earthquake risk areas in Tokyo.

Gadgets

UP300

Since two weeks ago I’ve seen this ads in different places in Tokyo. They are cool, but I had no idea what was it all about:

UP300x

It is a new Nikon gadget that was totally unexpected by the industry. The UP300 is a devices with headphones, an MP3 player with 8Gb, Windows Mobile 5.0 and a little screen where the user can see a screen equivalent to 51 inches. The UP300x version has 16Gb and the user can change the volume or change songs just moving the head. This is how the gadget looks like:

UP300x

The most interesting about this Nikon “wearable computer” is that it is pretty cheap compared with previous similar devices. The UP300 8Gbps the same price as an iTouch 32Gb here in Japan. It’s pretty cool, but I think you need MORE and BETTER to create a new market/revolution.

Pictures by Akihabaranews.