If you’ve taken a stroll through Nanjing, China lately, you might notice something peculiarly odd: vending machines. These things, on their own, are not usually odd, but sometimes the things inside of them are. This is one of those situations. This time, the Chinese are stuffing live crab inside of vending machines, giving “fresh” and “fast food” new meaning. The grab are placed inside individual plastic containers, and they are around 30 cents cheaper than crab sold in markets. What happens happens if you receive a dead crab? Consider yourself lucky: you’ll receive three live crabs for free….

Oh, Japan. You’ll never cease coming up with the best stuff. Why, just last night I was regaling a friend about ‘head bath’, which is a bathtub. For the top of your head. It’s a hat, that– no, really, this exists. Don’t give me that lip. I’m not taking any guff today. Not from you. Guff-free Thursdays up in here. Anyway, I guess I was talking about something. We’ll get back to head bath later; right now, let’s rap about Smell-O-Vision. You may remember Smell-O-Vision – a technology from the 1960′s, Smell-O-Vision was a fad that was designed to release smells in sync with on-screen action. Of course,…

What’s your kid wearing for Halloween? He’s not going as Batman, is he? I see, like, a trillion child Batmans running around every Halloween, all wearing that foam (plastic?) muscle bib chestplate deal, with snowpants so they don’t catch a cold. Parents, your child isn’t going to catch a cold. He’s the goddamned Batman. Anyway, the point is, your kid’s Halloween costume is stupid – muscle bib or no. If you really wanna have a pissing contest with the other parents on the block, you’ll consider the Kid’s Walker from Sakakibara Kikai. Obviously from Japan, the Kid’s Walker is a robot that… well,…

For the gentleman who is just too hot for his own good, Thanko has been gracious enough to supply the most ridiculous hunkalicious gadget the tech world ain’t never seen. The USB Necktie Cooler 3 doesn’t do anything you’re not expecting by title alone – except of course for turning you into an inescapably sexy lust magnet. You thought the ladies were attracted by your regular tie? What kind of pathetic ignoramus are you? Just plug this blinding sex symbol into a USB port, strike a manly pose, and attract female coworkers and passers-by alike with the gentle whirring of your love tie. All from the comfort…

Hey, eyes on the road, hero, do you want to get us killed? Sadly, current navigation technology leaves us little choice but to devote considerable time to a separate screen if we want visuals to accompany the sexy female computervoice (or Snoop Dogg, or Mr. T, or Gary Busey, or whatever you have installed… Gary Busey is frankly still pretty soothing). But lo! Check this out. Combining two geek staples – that is, glasses and LEDs – engineers at the University of Electro-Communication  in Japan (swear to Odin that’s a real place) have developed a system that… well, by all rights, feels like it…

After this morning, a regular fountain is going to have a seriously hard time impressing me. Built by KOEI Aquatic (I spent a grueling… like, six minutes trying to figure out if this is the same KOEI behind Dynasty Warriors – I dunno, guys), the fountain, inhabiting Japan’s Canal City mall in Fukuoka, works not unlike an inkjet printer, spraying programmed patterns of water onto… oh, whatever, you’re already watching the video, you know how this works. Just crank up iTunes and enjoy. There’s a dirty joke I’m missing here, but I’ll leave you to find it….

It’s no secret that Apple is big in Japan. That everything is big in Japan is besides the point – Apple is really big in Japan, guys. The release of an Apple product is nothing short of a holiday, and the Japanese seemingly make Apple’s offerings a more standard way of life than we do, even here. Case in point – You’re looking at shots of ease, a cafe in Tokyo’s Marunouichi Building, which offers its patrons an iPad at every table. ‘So what?’ you scoff. ‘Best Buy has a ton of public iPads.’ And true enough, I’d reply. But be that as it may, not only do you get to sip your pretentious beverage while fingering your…

If there’s one thing I know you want, it’s a bizarre blobby ghost-thing for your desktop. Have I got a treat for you. Students at the University of Tokyo and Waseda University have teamed up to create just such a thing. The Kokonatchi is an aforementioned bizarre blobby ghost-thing that monitors your Twitter feed for incoming messages and, after scanning them for content (via trigger words, emoticons, etc), alerts the user (you) by lighting up (via RGB LEDs), making totally freaky bird noises, and wiggling all over the place. On its own, that’s not terribly exciting. I’ve written about similar…

Well, that went well. Apparently the iPad is having a super launch day abroad, and perhaps nowhere better than in Japan, where they love their gadgets more than they love their families. Called a ‘frenzy’ by the Wall Street Journal, over a thousand people lined up, cash credit card in hand, to scoop up the all-American gadget. You’d think that of all nations, Japan would be able to crush Apple at its own game, at least locally. But apparently, that’s not the point. “Japanese products are very capable and powerful, but they don’t have the same charm as ones made by Apple,” said Kazuto Ishimura, a college…

Little is more satisfying to today’s Twitterwhore than the gathering of followers; I know I for one am certainly guilty. Lucky us – there’s now a means to stroke our titanic egos! Start up a wicked fat beatbox rhythm and click here to check out IS Parade, a service that quite literally puts you in control of an animated parade of followers, who declare their own recent tweets as they pass – all set to a totally infectious beat. Naturally, this is a Japanese invention, and only further proves they have way better ideas than we do. Assuming you have a few minutes to spare, check this out and feed your ego….