Tachikoma is a police robot with arachnid anatomy. It has four legs, but instead of feed it has wheels at the termination of each leg; this allows him to move really fast.
What I like the most about tachikomas is how their AI works. A group of tachikoma can communicate among them, they can discuss, interchange opinions and decide the best strategy to deactivate a bomb in a building or whatever. It happens that during a mission each tachikoma has different experiences, therefore each of them learns different things. At the end of each mission all tachikomas gather and synchronize their “brains”, they end up learning everything as a group, they end up knowing exactly the same things at the end of the day! This has many philosophical consequences, at the beginning of each day all tachikomas are the “same” and it is easy for them to agree about something, during their missions they diverge and it is more difficult for them to decide, there are more conflicts when trying to decide something.
It is interesting that as a society-culture, at some level we are like tachikomas. Reading the same newspapers, watching the same news, living in the same city… it all “synchronizes” our thinking, what we are worried about, and what we care about. I find it easier to agree on something with someone who reads, lives in the same country and has the same hobbies as me, than agreeing with someone who reads different books, watches different movies, lives in a different place. I’m not saying that being “synchronized” is good, I think variety is VERY important, and I always try to read from as many sources as possible, and I like not “agreeing” and learn new things discussing.
These last days I’m noticing LOTS of extra security measures in Tokyo, even though the G8 summit is in Hokkaido (1.000 km away from Tokyo). I’ve seen many police, some streets with extra security controls, and even some areas in Shibuya and Shinjuku where traffic was cut for some reason.
Here there are two posters that can be seen in many places since last week.
Asahi, the biggest beer brewing company in Japan, that we already know because they made The Personal Beer Robot (PBP) a while ago, has created a more advanced robot that is able to do:
These shops are specialized in cleaning and massaging your ears, I’ve never seen anything similar. One of the incentives is that the client can choose the girl who cleans your ears. One hour cleaning is 4.500 yen (27 euros) and you can find all their shops here, just in case you feel like something different an weird when you travel to Japan this summer.
These are all the steps. It seems you get a “real” massage at the end.
Client having some fun.
These are some of the instruments that will be used to massage and clean your ears.
These shelves with books can be found in some (very few) train stations in Tokyo. You are supposed to take a book, read it and return it. Nobody registers who takes which book. In the Spanish version of this post some people talk about how this system was introduced in some stations in Spain but all books disappeared after a while.
I’ve seen this only once, but I did not take a picture! Fortunately Roy and Danny did.
I think I’m starting to be too used to Japan and I’m loosing my capacity to be surprised by “things that make Japan different”. I uploaded his picture to Flickr and many users told me that all umbrellas in the picture except mine are transparent!
Yes, the transparent umbrella is the most common one in Japan. They’re cheap and they break easily, but people does not care because it’s seen as a temporary or emergency umbrella. Many transparent forgotten umbrellas can be found on the streets after some rain,. Also, I call the transparent umbrella the “community umbrella” because when you put your transparent umbrella together with other transparent umbrellas when you enter a shop or restaurant… then when you leave the place you don’t really know which one was your umbrella so you just get one It would be interesting to track a transparent umbrella around Tokyo during rainy week, I bet it would have many “owners” until it breaks.
Another advantage is that you can more or less see what it’s in front of you. In fact when riding a bicycle under the rain it is really useful, although I think it is illegal to ride a bike with an umbrella in Japan. I do it all the time and the police never said anything to me.
Japan is the country in the world where more umbrellas are produced during a year, and transparent umbrellas are the most common here. It must have some kind of record, It could the most successful umbrella of all times, maybe the news super-umbrellas will be the transparent ones ? Do you know which company makes these transparent umbrellas?
Yesterday I attended the Firefox 3 release in Tokyo. Gen Kanai (Mozilla marketing manager) invited me and Danny to the event. Unfortunately Danny could not attend but Francesco and Peter came with me. We had a great time meeting all kinds of people and eating really good food. Here there is Gen Kanai’s smile after the launch, I guess he has been working really hard lately and now he is very happy with Firefox 3 success.
What you can see behind Gen’s head is a screen showing Firefox 3 downloads all around Japan. I recorded a video that shows how Firefox 3 was released and in seconds people all around the country started downloading it. I specially like the bursts around Tokyo and Osaka area.
Nobuyoshi Araki and Daido Moriyama are two of the most famous contemporary Japanese photographers. Nobuyoshi Araki is the bad boy, he likes colors and controversy, on the other hand Daido Moriyama shots almost always en b&w and his pictures are sad and melancholic. Daido Moriyama was friend with Yukio Mishima, and he confesses that his photographic style is very influenced by his melodramatic novels.
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It would be interesting to track a transparent umbrella around Tokyo during rainy week, I bet it would have many “owners” until it breaks.
? Do you know which company makes these transparent umbrellas?
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