The Hikari factory is in northern Japan, in Akita Prefecture, just a little south and east of the capital city of Akita itself. Akita is on the western coast of Japan, so the prevailing winds blow ...

posted by  banzaitokyo | 1 week, 1 day ago | 0 comments

There is no legal basis for site-blocking in Japan and the country's constitution forbids censorship of any kind. Later this month, however, the government looks set to present proposals to local I...

posted by  banzaitokyo | 2 weeks, 3 days ago | 0 comments

The 2018 NTT DATA Global Open Innovation Contest recently took place in Tokyo, with companies from across the globe coming together to compete for the grand prize

Participants were selected by winn...

posted by  banzaitokyo | 2 weeks, 3 days ago | 0 comments

Authors beware, because an AI-written novel just made it past the first round of screening for a national literary prize in Japan.

The novel this program co-authored is titled, The Day A Computer W...

posted by  banzaitokyo | 3 weeks, 2 days ago | 0 comments

In 1957, Saruhashi became the first woman to receive a PhD in chemistry in Japan. Her work focused on measuring the molecules in seawater — like carbon dioxide, oxygen, and also radioactive molecul...

posted by  banzaitokyo | 1 month ago | 0 comments

Toyota Motor says it is suspending autonomous vehicle testing on US public roads in the wake of a fatal accident involving a test vehicle operated by the ride-hailing company Uber.

Toyota Research ...

posted by  Yubi | 1 month ago | 0 comments

Kunio Shimada, a professor of fluid mechanics and energy engineering at Fukushima University, has developed a special rubber that can generate electricity from solar and kinetic energy and save the...

posted by  banzaitokyo | 1 month, 1 week ago | 0 comments

Japan is launching a Cray XC50 supercomputer for advanced nuclear fusion research, which will begin production this year. While the Cray XC50 supercomputer is far from the most powerful on the plan...

posted by  banzaitokyo | 1 month, 1 week ago | 0 comments

If the thought of sitting through yet another meeting fills you with dread, you’ll be happy to hear that you could pay a ‘surrogate’ to sit through it for you.

Researchers from the University of To...

posted by  banzaitokyo | 1 month, 1 week ago | 0 comments

CUE is a humanoid robot that learned its shooting techniques from Artificial Intelligence (AI). It can shoot basketballs with incredible accuracy: a range of close to 200,000 shots can be made, at ...

posted by  banzaitokyo | 1 month, 1 week ago | 0 comments