Category: Japan

Japanese jeans designed by caged lions and tigers

On By A.P.In fashion, Japan, Jeans, lion, tiger, zoo, Zoo JeansLeave a comment

A Japanese jeans maker has found a new way of capitalising on zoo animals. Zoo Jeans are producing jeans “designed by dangerous animals”. Denim is wrapped around tyres, which are then thrown to the lions who enjoy ripping and biting at the material. This produces that all-important designer, distressed look.

Rather than simply being a marketing gimic, there is actually value in this from an animal welfare perspective. Involving lions and the zoo’s other large carnivores in the activity is part of what’s called environmental enrichment. This is the provision of stimuli to help improve well-being. It’s a win-win activity for many zoos, who can make alternative profits from their animals, which tend to be used to provide extra facilities for them.

Wrapping denim around a tyre to make enrichment devices for toothy carnivores is just one way that zoos have profited from their animals’ hobbies over the years. Since their inception, zoos have looked for different ways to fund their activities. London Zoo when it first opened would let in penniless visitors for a cat or dog to be fed to the carnivores. Visitors with money were offered other things to keep themselves amused as they looked at the animals.

read more: http://theconversation.com/jeans-designed-by-lions-and-tigers-are-a-win-win-for-zoos-28988

Kinki University in Japan is changing its joke-inducing name in order to appeal to English-speaking overseas students.

On By A.P.In Hitoshi Shiozaki, Japan, Kindai University, Kinki University, OsakaLeave a comment

From 2016 it is going to adopt the name of Kindai University.

Kinki is one of the biggest universities in western Japan with more than 32,000 students, but only 329 of them are from overseas.

The university is to change its name to avoid any misunderstanding.

The Kinki name is drawn from its surrounding local region – but the university has had to counter other interpretations.

The new name of Kindai University is a combination of “Kinki” and “Daigaku” for university.

The shift in name is part of its plans for a more international identity.

“The word ‘kinky’ also means perverted. We have no other choice than changing the English name because we are serious about pursuing a more international school culture,” the university’s dean, Hitoshi Shiozaki, told the AFP news agency.

“We aim to get more foreign students coming here, so we’ve decided to change our English name to ensure there is no misunderstanding,” the university told English language newspaper the Japan Times.

It is not clear whether the change in name will affect the university’s English language newspaper, the Kinki Times.

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-27519000

Japanese soft drink manufacturer will deliver a can of ‘Pocari Sweat’ to the lunar surface in 2015

On By A.P.In Astrobotic Technology, Elon Musk, Google, International Space Station, ISS, Japan, Lunar X, Lunar X competition, Otsuka Pharmaceutical, Pocari Sweat, Space and Time, SpaceX, The Moon1 Comment

The Tokyo-based Otsuka Pharmaceutical (their drinks are sold for their health benefits, but they also develop their own drugs) says it wants to use private space companies to deliver a 1kg ‘Dream Capsule’ in the shape of a can of their most popular soft drink, Pocari Sweat, to the lunar surface.

As well as a small amount of Pocari Sweat in powdered form, the titanium can will also contain numerous disks with “messages by children from all over Asia” etched into their surfaces. “The time capsule contains the childrens’ dreams,” claims the company.

Children who submit their messages to the company will also be given a ‘dream ring’ – a special ring pull that opens up the can. Otsuka say that they hope this will inspire the young people to become astronauts and travel back to the Moon to one day re-read their dreams (and drink some tasty Pocari Sweat as well).

Despite the overt or even extreme commercialism of the project it also has a serious scientific goal, and in addition to delivering Pocari Sweat, Otsuka will be hoping to place the first privately-launched lander on the Moon.

The company will be working with a Pittsburgh-based firm named Astrobotic Technology to send their capsule on the 236,121 mile trip to the Earth’s satellite, with the mission planned to take place in October 2015. Astrobotic will use a Falcon 9 rocket to make the trip – the hopefully-reusable launcher under development by Elon Musk’s private space company, SpaceX.

If Astrobotic and Otsuka manage to complete the mission they’ll also be able to claim the multi-million dollar bounty offered by Google’s Lunar X competition. The search giant announced the prize back in 2007 as a spur for private space companies, offering $20 million to the first team to “land a robot on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send images and data back to the Earth.”

Astrobotic’s involvement in the project is particularly ironic as the company, which reportedly charges upwards of half a million dollars to send items to the Moon, is mainly interested in developing technologies designed to clean up debris in space – instead they’ll be dumping what some will view as trash on the lunar surface.

Although Otsuka’s ambitions sound like the extreme end of the PR stunt spectrum (althoughm how does it compare to projecting a loaf of bread onto a beloved public sculpture?) space advertising has a storied – if controversial – history.

In 1993, an American company named Space ­Marketing Inc proposed launching a 1 kilometre squared illuminated billboard into low orbit, which would have appeared as big and as bright as the Moon in the night’s sky. Public outcry scuppered the plans and the US government subsequently introduced a ban on advertising in space.

However, the legislation was later amended to allow “unobtrusive” sponsorships, a change that meant Pizza Hut was ablle to pull off an advertising coup in 2001 by delivering a vacuum-sealed pizza (it was salami flavour – pepperoni didn’t have the necessary shelf life) to astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Otsuka and Pocari Sweat have also tried this sort of stunt before, and in the same year as Pizza Hut made the ultimate home delivery, the Japanese company created the first high-definition commercial in space, filming two Russian cosmonauts drinking Pocari Sweat and gazing pensively out of the window at the surface of the Earth below. In this context, delivering a can to the Moon’s surface seems like a small step for advertising, rather than a giant leap.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/the-first-advert-on-the-moon-japanese-soft-drink-manufacturer-will-deliver-a-can-of-pocari-sweat-to-the-lunar-surface-in-2015-9382535.html

Female insect uses spiky penis to extract nourishment from male in marathon-long mating sessions

On By A.P.In Brazil, Charles Lienhard, Current Biology, Dr. Lutter, Federal University of Lavras, Geneva Museum of Natural History, Hokkaido University, Japan, Kazunori Yoshizawa, Nature, Neotrogla, Penis, Rodrigo Ferreira, Switzerland1 Comment

In desolate caves throughout Brazil live insects that copulate for days, the female’s penetrating erectile organ sticking fast in a reluctant male’s genital chamber until he offers a gift of nutritious semen. Neotrogla seems to be unique among species with reversed sex roles — with choosy males and aggressive, promiscuous females — in also having swapped anatomy, researchers report.

Not all animal species have a male penis, but because the evolution of body parts usually works through slow modification of existing structures, there would need to be a good reason for a female to develop a penetrating organ, says entomologist Kazunori Yoshizawa of Hokkaido University in Japan, a co-author of the study.

Yoshizawa and his colleagues think that they have found that reason in Neotrogla, which was first described in 2012. The insects were originally spotted in Brazilian caves by ecologist Rodrigo Ferreira from the Federal University of Lavras in Brazil. Entomologist Charles Lienhard at the Geneva Museum of Natural History in Switzerland recognized them as a new genus — and also as possessing unusual genitalia. The team’s work describing the reproductive practices of four separate species of Neotrogla is published today in Current Biology.

When the flea-sized winged insects mate, the female mounts the male and penetrates deep into a thin genital opening in his back. Membranes in her organ swell to lock her in, and multiple spiky spines act as grappling hooks to anchor her tightly to the male. (When researchers tried to pull apart two mating insects, the female was gripping so tightly that the male was accidentally ripped in half, leaving his genitalia still attached to the female.) The tip of the female’s penis fits neatly into the male’s genitalia to allow her to receive a large, teardrop-shaped sperm capsule over their 40–70 hours of copulation.

The key to the anatomy and role reversal might be simple hunger. Neotrogla species live in extremely dry caves, says Ferreira, where there is not much in the way of food, save for bat guano and the occasional dead bat. A female needs enough nourishment to make eggs and reproduce, though, so she likely found another source of nutrition, Yoshizawa says: her mate’s semen capsule. In some other insects, males expend personal resources to create highly sought-after ‘nuptial gifts’ of sperm and nutrients that they bestow upon their mate during copulation. Although it’s not clear whether Neotrogla couples do likewise, the females accept seminal gifts and drain them even when they’re too young to reproduce, Yoshizawa says, so it’s obvious they’re using the sperm capsules for more than mere reproduction.

If Neotrogla males need to spend valuable resources producing their sperm packets, it’s likely they would be choosy about their mates, Yoshizawa says, which would help explain why the females have evolved a penis well designed to hold down reluctant mates long enough to wring out all their gifts. This might be a combination unique to Neotrogla, he says: Although other animals have swapped sex roles where the female is the promiscuous aggressor (the scorpion fly, for example), and others have swapped anatomy where the female penetrates the male (seahorses, for example), none appears to have developed both reversed sex roles and a female penis with grappling hooks.

The authors make a “convincing case” that this female penis is associated with sex-role reversal where males are choosy, as would be expected under sexual-selection theory, says William Eberhard, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Costa Rica in San Pedro.

If Neotrogla can be observed in captivity, they might be good models for studying how and why male and female roles and anatomy can get switched around during copulation, he adds.

Yoshizawa and his colleagues are now working to establish a healthy population in the lab, but the biggest challenge will be finding a suitable food to replace the cave-bat droppings, Yoshizawa says. Flour, yeast and skimmed milk are all under consideration. to replace the cave-bat droppings.

http://www.nature.com/news/female-insect-uses-spiky-penis-to-take-charge-1.15064

Thanks to Dr. Lutter for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

Japan’s Annual Penis Festival Is As Phallic As You’d Expect

On By A.P.In Japan, Penis, Penis Festival, Ray GaudetteLeave a comment

Each spring, people flock to Kawasaki, Japan, to celebrate Kanamara Matsuri, aka the “Festival of the Steel Phallus.”

Held this year on April 6, the festival is a celebration of the penis and fertility. People parade gigantic phallic-shaped mikoshi (portable Shinto shrines) down the streets during the event, as revelers suck on penis lollipops, buy penis-themed memorabilia and pose with sculptures in the shape of — you guessed it — penises.

According to the BBC, the festival is believed to have roots in the 17th century, when prostitutes are said to have prayed for protection from sexually transmitted infections at Kawasaki’s Kanamara shrine.

The festival raises awareness about safe sex practices and fundraises for HIV prevention.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/07/japan-penis-festival-kanamara-matsuri_n_5106378.html

Thanks to Ray Gaudette for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

Japanese turnip may stop the flu

On By A.P.In exopolysaccharides, Flu, Food, Health, influenza, Japan, KAGOME, Lactobacillus brevis, Letters in Applied Microbiology, Naoko Waki, Science, suguki, superfoodLeave a comment

Suguki-640x426

Scientists have discovered that bacteria found in a traditional Japanese pickle can prevent flu. Could this be the next superfood?

The research, which assesses the immune-boosting powers of Lactobacillus brevis from Suguki – a pickled turnip, popular in Japan – in mice that have been exposed to a flu virus, is published today (06 November) in the SfAM journal, Letters in Applied Microbiology.

Lead researcher, Ms Naoko Waki of KAGOME CO., LTD. in Japan said: “Our results show that when a particular strain of Lactobacillus brevis is eaten by mice, it has protective effects against influenza virus infection.”

Suguki enthusiasts have often cited its protective powers but it is not known yet whether the same effects will be seen in humans. Human clinical trials using a probiotic drink containing Lactobacillus brevis KB290 bacteria are underway and scientists are hopeful that, given a suitable quantity of bacteria, foods containing them may turn out to be the next superfood.

What it is about the bacteria that gives them this amazing property is not known, but it is remarkably tolerant to stomach juices, which are too acidic for many bacteria. This is largely due to a protective layer of sugars called exopolysaccharides.

“We know that exopolysaccharides have immune boosting effects in other similar bacteria, so we wonder if the exopolysaccharides of KB290 are responsible for the effects we see,” said Ms Waki. Further studies will be undertaken to investigate this.

The effect of the bacteria is to increase the production of immune system molecules in the body – IFN-α and flu-specific antibodies – and to enhance activity to eradicate virus infected cells. In this study these effects were sufficient to prevent infection by the H1N1 flu and the scientists think that there could also be protection against other viral infections, including the deadly H7N9 flu, which has recently emerged in China.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-11/w-jsp110413.php

‘Jumping Genes’ Linked to Schizophrenia

On By A.P.In DNA, Dr. Rajadhyaksha, gene, Japan, jumping gene, line element, Medicine, mental health, mental illness, neural activity, neurogenesis, neurologist, Neurology, Neuron, neuroplasticity, Neuropsychiatric Disease, Neuroscience, neuroscientist, neurotransmitter, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, schizophrenia, Science, Tadafumi KatoLeave a comment

sn-schizophrenia

Roaming bits of DNA that can relocate and proliferate throughout the genome, called “jumping genes,” may contribute to schizophrenia, a new study suggests. These rogue genetic elements pepper the brain tissue of deceased people with the disorder and multiply in response to stressful events, such as infection during pregnancy, which increase the risk of the disease. The study could help explain how genes and environment work together to produce the complex disorder and may even point to ways of lowering the risk of the disease, researchers say.

Schizophrenia causes hallucinations, delusions, and a host of other cognitive problems, and afflicts roughly 1% of all people. It runs in families—a person whose twin sibling has the disorder, for example, has a roughly 50-50 chance of developing it. Scientists have struggled to define which genes are most important to developing the disease, however; each individual gene associated with the disorder confers only modest risk. Environmental factors such as viral infections before birth have also been shown to increase risk of developing schizophrenia, but how and whether these exposures work together with genes to skew brain development and produce the disease is still unclear, says Tadafumi Kato, a neuroscientist at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Wako City, Japan and co-author of the new study.

Over the past several years, a new mechanism for genetic mutation has attracted considerable interest from researchers studying neurological disorders, Kato says. Informally called jumping genes, these bits of DNA can replicate and insert themselves into other regions of the genome, where they either lie silent, doing nothing; start churning out their own genetic products; or alter the activity of their neighboring genes. If that sounds potentially dangerous, it is: Such genes are often the culprits behind tumor-causing mutations and have been implicated in several neurological diseases. However, jumping genes also make up nearly half the current human genome, suggesting that humans owe much of our identity to their audacious leaps.

Recent research by neuroscientist Fred Gage and colleagues at the University of California (UC), San Diego, has shown that one of the most common types of jumping gene in people, called L1, is particularly abundant in human stem cells in the brain that ultimately differentiate into neurons and plays an important role in regulating neuronal development and proliferation. Although Gage and colleagues have found that increased L1 is associated with mental disorders such as Rett syndrome, a form of autism, and a neurological motor disease called Louis-Bar syndrome, “no one had looked very carefully” to see if the gene might also contribute to schizophrenia, he says.

To investigate that question, principal investigator Kazuya Iwamoto, a neuroscientist; Kato; and their team at RIKEN extracted brain tissue of deceased people who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia as well as several other mental disorders, extracted DNA from their neurons, and compared it with that of healthy people. Compared with controls, there was a 1.1-fold increase in L1 in the tissue of people with schizophrenia, as well as slightly less elevated levels in people with other mental disorders such as major depression, the team reports today in Neuron.

Next, the scientists tested whether environmental factors associated with schizophrenia could trigger a comparable increase in L1. They injected pregnant mice with a chemical that simulates viral infection and found that their offspring did, indeed, show higher levels of the gene in their brain tissue. An additional study in infant macaques, which mimicked exposure to a hormone also associated with increased schizophrenia risk, produced similar results. Finally, the group examined human neural stem cells extracted from people with schizophrenia and found that these, too, showed higher levels of L1.

The fact that it is possible to increase the number of copies of L1 in the mouse and macaque brains using established environmental triggers for schizophrenia shows that such genetic mutations in the brain may be preventable if such exposures can be avoided, Kato says. He says he hopes that the “new view” that environmental factors can trigger or deter genetic changes involved in the disease will help remove some of the disorder’s stigma.

Combined with previous studies on other disorders, the new study suggests that L1 genes are indeed more active in the brain of patients with neuropsychiatric diseases, Gage says. He cautions, however, that no one yet knows whether they are actually causing the disease. “Now that we have multiple confirmations of this occurring in humans with different diseases, the next step is to determine if possible what role, if any, they play.”

One tantalizing possibility is that as these restless bits of DNA drift throughout the genomes of human brain cells, they help create the vibrant cognitive diversity that helps humans as a species respond to changing environmental conditions, and produces extraordinary “outliers,” including innovators and geniuses such as Picasso, says UC San Diego neuroscientist Alysson Muotri. The price of such rich diversity may be that mutations contributing to mental disorders such as schizophrenia sometimes emerge. Figuring out what these jumping genes truly do in the human brain is the “next frontier” for understanding complex mental disorders, he says. “This is only the tip of the iceberg.”

Thanks to Dr. Rajadhyaksha for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/01/jumping-genes-linked-schizophrenia

Physicists discover ‘clearest evidence yet’ that the Universe is a hologram

On By A.P.In arXiv repository, black hole, Einstein, gravity, Hologram, Ibaraki University, Juan Maldacena, Leonard Susskind, Nature, physics, quantum physics, Space and Time, string theory, universe, Yoshifumi HyakutakeLeave a comment

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At a black hole, Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity apparently clashes with quantum physics, but that conflict could be solved if the Universe were a holographic projection.

A team of physicists have provided what has been described by the journal Nature as the “clearest evidence yet” that our universe is a hologram.

The new research could help reconcile one of modern physics’ most enduring problems : the apparent inconsistencies between the different models of the universe as explained by quantum physics and Einstein’s theory of gravity.

The two new scientific papers are the culmination of years’ work led by Yoshifumi Hyakutake of Ibaraki University in Japan, and deal with hypothetical calculations of the energies of black holes in different universes.

The idea of the universe existing as a ‘hologram’ doesn’t refer to a Matrix-like illusion, but the theory that the three dimensions we perceive are actually just “painted” onto the cosmological horizon – the boundary of the known universe.

If this sounds paradoxical, try to imagine a holographic picture that changes as you move it. Although the picture is two dimensional, observing it from different locations creates the illusion that it is 3D.

This model of the universe helps explain some inconsistencies between general relativity (Einstein’s theory) and quantum physics. Although Einstein’s work underpins much of modern physics, at certain extremes (such as in the middle of a black hole) the principles he outlined break down and the laws of quantum physics take over.

The traditional method of reconciling these two models has come from the 1997 work of theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena, whose ideas built upon string theory. This is one of the most well respected ‘theories of everything’ (Stephen Hawking is a fan) and it posits that one-dimensional vibrating objects known as ‘strings’ are the elementary particles of the universe.

Maldacena has welcomed the new research by Hyakutake and his team, telling the journal Nature that the findings are “an interesting way to test many ideas in quantum gravity and string theory.”

Leonard Susskind, a theoretical physicist regarded as one of the fathers of string theory, added that the work by the Japanese team “numerically confirmed, perhaps for the first time, something we were fairly sure had to be true, but was still a conjecture.”

Here is the original press release from Nature:

A team of physicists has provided some of the clearest evidence yet that our Universe could be just one big projection.

In 1997, theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena proposed1 that an audacious model of the Universe in which gravity arises from infinitesimally thin, vibrating strings could be reinterpreted in terms of well-established physics. The mathematically intricate world of strings, which exist in nine dimensions of space plus one of time, would be merely a hologram: the real action would play out in a simpler, flatter cosmos where there is no gravity.

Maldacena’s idea thrilled physicists because it offered a way to put the popular but still unproven theory of strings on solid footing — and because it solved apparent inconsistencies between quantum physics and Einstein’s theory of gravity. It provided physicists with a mathematical Rosetta stone, a ‘duality’, that allowed them to translate back and forth between the two languages, and solve problems in one model that seemed intractable in the other and vice versa. But although the validity of Maldacena’s ideas has pretty much been taken for granted ever since, a rigorous proof has been elusive.

In two papers posted on the arXiv repository, Yoshifumi Hyakutake of Ibaraki University in Japan and his colleagues now provide, if not an actual proof, at least compelling evidence that Maldacena’s conjecture is true.

In one paper2, Hyakutake computes the internal energy of a black hole, the position of its event horizon (the boundary between the black hole and the rest of the Universe), its entropy and other properties based on the predictions of string theory as well as the effects of so-called virtual particles that continuously pop into and out of existence. In the other3, he and his collaborators calculate the internal energy of the corresponding lower-dimensional cosmos with no gravity. The two computer calculations match.

“It seems to be a correct computation,” says Maldacena, who is now at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and who did not contribute to the team’s work.

The findings “are an interesting way to test many ideas in quantum gravity and string theory”, Maldacena adds. The two papers, he notes, are the culmination of a series of articles contributed by the Japanese team over the past few years. “The whole sequence of papers is very nice because it tests the dual [nature of the universes] in regimes where there are no analytic tests.”

“They have numerically confirmed, perhaps for the first time, something we were fairly sure had to be true, but was still a conjecture — namely that the thermodynamics of certain black holes can be reproduced from a lower-dimensional universe,” says Leonard Susskind, a theoretical physicist at Stanford University in California who was among the first theoreticians to explore the idea of holographic universes.

Neither of the model universes explored by the Japanese team resembles our own, Maldacena notes. The cosmos with a black hole has ten dimensions, with eight of them forming an eight-dimensional sphere. The lower-dimensional, gravity-free one has but a single dimension, and its menagerie of quantum particles resembles a group of idealized springs, or harmonic oscillators, attached to one another.

Nevertheless, says Maldacena, the numerical proof that these two seemingly disparate worlds are actually identical gives hope that the gravitational properties of our Universe can one day be explained by a simpler cosmos purely in terms of quantum theory.

http://www.nature.com/news/simulations-back-up-theory-that-universe-is-a-hologram-1.14328#/b1

Japanese inventions signal the future changes in human relationships

On By A.P.In Atami, dystopian future, girlfriend coat, Hugvie, Japan, Kebmodee, loneliness, Masahito Tsurimi, Nyan Nyan Nouveau, The Future, video game relationships, Wall Street Journal, wine for catsLeave a comment

art-coat-200x0

A Guardian article about Japanese young people no longer being interested in sex and relationships has generated a lot of blogosphere criticism recently, primarily about Western media exoticising “weird” Japanese culture. Those criticisms duly noted, there have also been some recent Japanese innovations that seem to not only support the premise of the article – that technology is taking over the space once occupied by sex and dating – but take it further. Several recent inventions in Japan seem not only likely to disrupt traditional relationships in the way that social media or text messaging has, but to physically replace companionship and affection. A report this week of the physiological benefits of using the Hugvie, a soft doll that simulates a human heartbeat so that the user can “cuddle” with the person on the other end of their phone, is one such case.

Here are some Japanese inventions, like the Hugvie, that may be the most solid proof that Japan is indeed throwing out the idea of relationships and becoming a dystopian future of human loneliness.

The Hugvie is a soft body-fitting pillow with a slot in the head for a smart phone. Users can cuddle with the pillow while talking on the phone, and the pillow’s internal vibrators generate a simulated heartbeat of the caller based on the voice’s tone and volume. In other words, the soft, “blobular” doll transforms a standard phone conversation into a “cuddling” experience with your phone companion. The gizmo was invented by an Osaka University professor who built off of an earlier remote-controlled doll.

A video from the product’s launch last year shows users talking into the phone end and cradling their pillows, and new evidence suggests that the pillow might be as satisfying and soul-warming as the video portrays: a joint study from the University of Sussex and Osaka University that levels of the stress hormone cortisol were reduced in people after using the pillow.

Wine for cats
Earlier this month, a Japanese company took the age-old stereotype of the lonely cat woman and made it a little less lonely with the invention of Nyan Nyan Nouveau, a non-alcoholic feline wine. Masahito Tsurimi, the chief executive of the company behind the wine, told the Wall Street Journal that it was invented in response to requests from cat-owners – despite the fact that only one in 10 cats were willing to taste it.

Tsurimi said he saw a bright future in the “specialty pet-drink business” six years ago when he was worried about where future beverage sales would come from with a shrinking, ageing Japanese population. It was probably just a nice bonus when he read about the country’s sexual aversion and social awkwardness on top of that.

The girlfriend coat
In April of this year, RocketNews 24 reported that a group of engineering students at Tsukuba University created a coat that could hug its wearer and whisper phrases into its ear. Meant to simulate a girlfriend, motors in the coat operate the “arms” that squeeze the wearer when he puts it on. In a pair of headphones he slips on with the coat, he also hears one of a number of programmed phrases: “I’m sorry, were you waiting?” and “Guess who?”

The university students named it the Riajyuu Coat. According to gaming site Kotaku, riajyuu is a mash-up Japanese word that means someone who is pleased with his non-virtual life. Unlike some of the other replacements for human contact, this one appears to have just been a joke between friends, and the inventors have no real plans to release it commercially.

Video game relationships
Japan has cultivated a global reputation for their romantic simulation video games, and for good reason: while some of the games are just bizarre, like a game in which both the player and his mate are pigeons, others mimic relationships down to eerily small details. LovePlus, for instance, a dating simulation game released in Japan in 2009, invites players to choose one girl that they prefer out of three types – a “goodie-goodie”, “sassy”, or “big-sister” type – and then earn “boyfriend power” points by going to the gym or doing homework to become smarter. The girl can get mad at their boyfriends, too: in a 2010 article, LovePlus gamer Shunsuke Kato told the Wall Street Journal he was on the outs with his LovePlus “girlfriend” for being busy at work and only playing the game for 10 minutes a day.

The game has blurred the line between real and virtual to such an extent that a Japanese resort town once known for honeymooning, Atami, launched a promotional campaign in 2010 that relied on recreating the virtual trip to Atami from the game. At Atami’s (real) Hotel Ohnoya, the staff was trained to check in single men as couples, and restaurants created Love Plus-inspired menus for the gaming guests.

If there’s some silver lining to be found in all of this, it’s that a business opportunity will be there to pad the landing when humans do something self-destructive. As Japan has demonstrated, the risk of a plummeting birth rate and the social instability inherent in becoming a society where unmarried people exist in large numbers at least opens up the possibility for bizarre romance-gamer tourism, wine for cats and pillows you can cuddle with.

http://m.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/bizarre-japanese-inventions-signal-the-future-of-human-loneliness-20131104-2ww7d.html

Thanks to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

9 lousy places for a vacation

On By A.P.In Alnwick Poison Garden, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Buford, Burma, Caspian Sea, Chernobyl, Crocodile, England, Honshu island, Ilha de Queimada Grande, Japan, lancehead, mud volcano, Napoleon, Nature, Pacific garbage patch, Pacific Ocean, Pripyat, Ramree Island, Snake, Snake Island, St. Helena, Texas, The Izus, Ukraine, vacation, Volcano, world war 2, World War II, WWII, Wyoming, Zone of AlienationLeave a comment

1. Buford, Wyoming
1 - Buford
Formerly sporting a bustling population of two, Buford now only has a single resident.

2. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
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The Patch is a basically immobile, gigantic mass of trash out in the middle of the Pacific. Most estimates put its size—composed entirely of plastic bottles, chemical sludge, and basically any other kind of debris you can imagine—larger than the state of Texas. You’d probably rather go to Texas.

3. Alnwick Poison Garden, England
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The Alnwick Poison Garden is pretty much what you’d think it is: a garden full of plants that can kill you (among many other things). Some of the plants are so dangerous that they have to be kept behind bars. It’s not exactly your typical stroll through a botanical garden.

4. Ramree Island, Burma
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Ramree Island may be in the beautiful Burma, but nothing about this place is beautiful. It’s actually just a giant swamp full of thousands of saltwater crocodiles—which are the deadliest in the world—plus mosquitos loaded with malaria, oh, and venomous scorpions. Also, there was a six-week long battle here during WWII, in which only twenty Japanese soliders survived… out of 1000. And most were killed by the wildlife.

5. The Zone of Alienation, Ukraine
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Although you probably wouldn’t want to vacation in Pripyat either, the Zone of Alienation is the 19-mile decommissioned perimeter surrounding the grounds of the Chernobyl incident. It’s administered by a branch of government specifically so that no-one is allowed into it, but there are a few hundred residents who refused to move. What’s wrong with those people? You probably don’t want to know

6. Ilha de Queimada Grande, Brazil
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Sorry to tell you this, but Ilha de Queimada Grande isn’t a fantastical island getaway. It’s actually an island full of thousands of snakes. Its name literally means, “Snake Island.” It has the highest concentration of snakes in the world, with 1-5 golden lanceheads per square meter—oh, and they’re very poisonous: when designs were drawn up to build a plantation on the island, all the scouts were killed.

7. St. Helena
7 - st helena
If you somehow end up in the same place where Napoleon was imprisoned and spent his final days, things are probably going wrong. Oh yeah, and there’s no functioning airport, either. The only way you can get on or off the island is via container ships from South Africa. Which only come every few months.

8. Izu Island, Japan
8 - japan
The Izus are a group of volcanic islands located off the southern coast of Japan’s Honshu island. They’re technically part of Tokyo, except because they’re extremely volcanic, the air constantly smells of sulfur and residents have been evacuated twice—in 1953 and 2000—because of “dangerously high levels of gas.” Although allowed back in 2005, inhabitants are now required to carry gas masks on their person at all times.

9. Mud Volcanoes of Azerbaijan
9 - mud volcano
Sure, mud volcanoes aren’t nearly as dangerous as their cousins of the magmatic variety, but when they do actually erupt, it’s not exactly a pretty sight. In 2001, a new island grew out of the Caspian Sea, due to an increase in volcanic activity—right nearby where hundreds of these bad boys are. Generally, they go off every twenty years, and when they do, they shoot flames “hundreds of meters into the sky” and deposit tons of mud into the immediate area.

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