These cool Shinkansen chopsticks from Daiwa Toy [JP] are modeled after the various bullet trains in service in Japan. They’re available in a variety of styles, sure to impress the most avid fan of Japan’s wicked-fast railways.

At $25.99 (USD) a pair, they’re not the world’s cheapest chopsticks, but they are officially licensed by Japan’s JR, and are bound to be collector’s items down the (rail)road. If you’re ready to eat some sushi in a hurry, you can hop on the Chopstick Express over at AudioCubes.

Now that I’m a few years older (and more mature), I feel like I sort of owe it to them to make amends because of how I made fun of their inadequacies – which is why I’m going to tell them (and all of you other beardless men out there) about the Propia Hige Japanese Fake Beard that’s available from the Japan Trend Shop.

These fake beards are extremely realistic-looking beards that you stick onto your face and just forget, because they’re not the huge and freakishly bushy type. They’re all in the color black, though, so you might have to pass if you’re a blonde or a redhead.

However, faux facial hair doesn’t come cheap though, as a set of three of these beards of your choice is priced at the ridiculous amount of $137(USD).

Matsumura and company call their invention the Universal Earphones. Their secret is surprisingly simple and inexpensive – a proximity sensor piggybacked on one of the earbuds. As you can see in the picture above, the sensor faces towards the left ear and away from the right ear. If it detects that it’s about 30mm away from the ear, it means that it’s on the right ear. This input causes the earphones to switch the channels accordingly.

But that’s not all. By running a weak electrical current through the ear buds, the Universal Earphones can also detect if it’s being used by one person or shared by two people. If the current is interrupted it means that the earbuds are on separate heads. The earphones will then pump out a mono mix of the audio being played so the listeners can hear both channels at once. Genius! I suggest you put on your own earphones – correctly, of course – when you watch the video below.

That was awesome, save for the creepy synthesized narrator.

[via Engadget]

Oh, how I wish I had one of these Dictionary Desk Pillows in my bookshelf. You see, this extremely thick volume doesn’t cram millions of definitions in it, but a huge, cushy and comfortable-looking pillow instead. When it’s snapped shut, you can simply place it on your book case and no one will be any wiser.

There’s only one problem though: unless you speak Chinese, then it might strike some people as odd that you’d have this huge dictionary in your shelf. The Dictionary Desk Pillows are available from the Japan Trend Shop for $80 (USD), making them some expensive pillows, too. I’m sure if you live in Japan, you can get one for quite a bit less.

But what about the rest of your face? Well, the Japan Trend Shop has a solution for that, too: the Face Slimmer Exercise Mouthpiece. It’s basically a mouthpiece that looks like a huge pair of puffed-up, gigantic lips. To exercise your face, just pop it into your mouth and say loud vowel sounds again and again for three minutes every day.

The movements will produce “regular and methodical muscle exercises” that will strengthen your facial muscles. The retailer claims that this product can fight wrinkles and improve the overall tone and look of your face – although I’m sure the latter isn’t applicable while you’re using the mouthpiece.

These Face Slimmer Mouthpieces are available online for $83 (USD). That’s pretty pricey for a piece of rubber, but still cheaper than a face lift, I suppose. But then again, there’s also no guarantee if it will deliver what it promises to, and you’ll look insane while you use it.

It’s official name is the SH-04D and it’s part of the DoCoMo ‘With’ series of collaborative phone designs. It runs a custom Android 2.3 interface, pre-loaded with a chocolate-themed game and wallpapers. It even comes with a “Chocobed” recharging station, that’s been designed to look like a chocolate box. How cute.

The actual phone is produced by Sharp and only 30,000 units will be made. This phone will sell for ¥40,000 (~$521 USD). Now that’s expensive chocolate!

[via designboom]

The limited-edition Kisai Optical Illusion is a touchscreen alarm watch, with time, date, alarm, and EL backlighting. You’ll need keen eyes to make out the time, as it’s hidden in diagonally reversed lines among a maze of confusing squiggles.

If that’s too hard on your peepers, you can just press the reveal button and the watch will show the time. It comes with an animation mode as well, which alternates between the puzzling illusion and revealing the time ever 20 seconds.

While it might not look that technologically advanced, the display has one of the most complex LCD screens ever on a watch, with over 1500 tiny LCD segments which need to be addressable by its time circuits. The watch is made out of stainless steel, and it’s available in either black or silver with a natural or green display. For the next two days, you can order the Kisai Optical Illusion watch for $179 (USD). After this, you’ll end up paying $199.

I just wish I had seen the Rhythm Slim Chin Exerciser gadget before I met her, so I could’ve at least said something aside from repeating “Yeah, I understand” and “No, I don’t think it looks that bad at all!” throughout the entire conversation.

So where in the world can you get a nifty little gadget that promises to exercise your neck and jaw muscles to ease cramps, fight off wrinkles, and prevent sagging skin? From Japan. But for everyone else who lives elsewhere, then you can get it from the Japan Trend Shop.

Basically, you just position the exerciser under your chin and push down. Hold that position for ten seconds if you can, release, then repeat the entire thing for at least three minutes each day.

I don’t know if this is a proven thing, but it sure beats having to go get some plastic surgery if you really care that much about a wrinkly-looking chin. It sells for $136 (USD), which is a whole lot less than what you’d normally have to shell out if you were going to get some surgery done as well – but probably a whole lot more than you’d pay for it if you lived in Japan.

[via Japan Trend Shop]

The 3Ds system is a special “Snake Camouflage” 3DS that of course looks like black snake skin. Sadly for those of us in the U.S., this is a Japanese exclusive, only available at Konami Style (JP), the company’s online shop, for ¥22,980 (appx. $298 USD.)

If you live in Japan you can pre-order before February 3, but it is so limited that you will only be able to buy one if you enter a raffle. The winners will get an e-mail from Konami by February 10, with the package itself coming on March 8 if you win.

[via TechCrunch]

The Infobar C01 (JP) looks pretty retro with its checkered keyboard beneath a full touchscreen. It’s powered by Android and measures a disproportionately tall 5.11 inches in height by 2 inches in width and under half an inch in thickness. It weighs 3.7 oz and its 3.2-inch screen has a 854×480 resolution. It has an 8 MP CMOS camera, USB and microSD ports. It’s Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and IR compatible. Since it’s designed for the Japanese market, it also comes with a digital TV tuner.

The phones will be available in Japan in February 2012 on the KDDI (JP) mobile phone carrier. Even if you do like its looks, it’s doubtful that you’ll ever be able to get one outside of Japan though.

[via designboom]

Tests have yielded a 98% percent recognition success rate. The data gets sent back to a laptop where it is aggregated into a reading of your specific butt. Then it can be used as the “key” to keep others from using your car.

It might also alert you to the fact that you are gaining weight if it one day refuses to turn on the car. That will teach you to eat the entire bag of chips.

[via TechCrunch via Geekosysytem]

It’s a shame we have no video of it in action. Then again, brightly colored Japanese characters and exclamation marks are pretty compelling. Head to Strapya World to get your own Dustbox R/C for about $21(USD). It’s also available in black and white, but not Wall-E yellow.

[via 7 Gadgets]

The Japanese manufacturer Pleiades [JP] designed Trumstand. The acoustic amplifier is made out of gold- or silver-plated brass, and elongated into a long ‘S’ shape. Apparently, this amplifies the bass of the music being played. Just set your iPhone into the rubberized dock to form a tight seal, and you’re all set. Despite the fact that it’s an acoustic amp, they were at least kind enough to include a USB connector for charging your phone while docked.

They are quite striking, but I still can’t imagine that amplifying the iPhone’s tiny little speaker could possibly be as good as a proper set of speakers and an amp.

The gold version costs ¥158,000 (~$2,000 USD) and the silver ¥138,000 (~$1,800 USD). At those price, you better be sure you’ll like the way they sound.

[via core77]

The tiny, oddly-named Fuuvi Bee 8mm camera (JP) doesn’t shoot movies on film, though it sure looks like it should. Instead, it captures video or still images with a decidedly retro look to them. It even does away with the LCD viewfinder, and replaces it with an old-school optical one, with all of the unpredictability that goes with. It’s also got a tripod mount on the bottom of the handle, in case you want to steady your shots.

The Bee captures low fidelity photos and movies with plenty of chromatic aberrations and other grungy artifacts to give them lots of “character.” Below are a couple of example stills and a video for you to enjoy.

Resolution is a decidedly retro 640×480 at 30fps for video, and still images are captured at just 1280×960 resolution (appx. 1.3 megapixels.) But you weren’t planning on using the Fuuvi Bee in place of your DSLR, were you? Images are captured onto an SDHC card, and you charge the camera using a USB cable.

In addition to the examples here, there’s a gallery of samples with a few more videos and images for you to check out.

You can find the Fuuvi Bee 8mm camera over at Audiocubes for $79.99 (USD) in either black or white. If you do end up buying one, and are baffled about how to use it, you can download the English manual here (PDF).

Like many Asian countries, Japan has got pretty good free Wi-Fi coverage, but like all things, there’s room for improvement, which is where these vending machines come in. Asahi [JP] says that they will allow people within 160 feet to access the Internet for free, on multiple devices, without registering.

Building Wi-Fi hotspots into vending machines make good sense, because they already have to be plugged into a power source, and presumably these days they also need to communicate sales and stock information back to the main office. Over the next five years, Asahi plans on putting out about 10,000 of these machines. For 2012, they plan on installing 1,000.

And no, the beer isn’t free, just the Wi-Fi.

[via CrunchGear]

That’s not the only bad news. The 3DS, Wii, and PS3 sold more units in the run up to Christmas. The launch weekend saw the PS Vita sell 324,859 units, then there was a surprising drop between December 19-25 where it only sold 72,479.

To give you an idea, the PSP sold 101,121 units for the same period. Some drop is typical after the initial offering, but not like this. The 3DS sold 482,200 units during the PS Vita launch week and then only dropped to 357,691 sales last week. Things are not looking great for Sony so far, but only time will tell if the PS Vita can compete, especially with the impact that smartphones and tablets are having on the handheld gaming market.

[Andriasang via Geek]

The two robot fighters shown here are Nagare Gold and Thunderbolt. The other one is the referee. Unlike real(fake) wrestling, no robot was thrown into the crowd, no one hit the other with a folded metal chair and Captain Lou Albano was not present.

I love how the robot ref gets down on his knees and gives the count when a ‘bot goes down and gets pinned to the mat. If you had money on this match, I hope you picked Thunderbolt, because around the 5:50 mark in the video, he totally hands Nagare Gold his shiny metal ass.

[via Robots-Dreams]

The OriHime ‘bot is actually supposed to be an emotive avatar for video chats, but can strike some sexy robo-poses controlled by the party on the other end of the line. I suppose that’s cool, but somewhat freaky, if you find it attractive this way. It’s really designed to act as a remote “friend” for lonely people, like children in hospitals, and not robo-perverts though.

Do you think that robots will take over for runway models? Well, not anytime soon as we all know that simply walking on two feet is still a real challenge for most robots.

[via Plastic Pals]

The new robot is an upgrade from the nearly 7-foot-tall bot he previously built. A 13-foot-tall bot is impressive, but it is only an interim design apparently. After this bot, Sakamoto plans to build a new one that is 26-feet-tall with a cockpit. Ultimately, he wants to go to 59-feet tall. Unfortunately, there’s no video yet of the new robot, but here’s a clip of Hajime 33, the big ‘bots predecessor.

And here’s a brief history of the Hajime robots, which started out at less than a foot tall.

If you are wondering, that 59-foot tall robot would be a 1:1 Gundam size bot, like the stationary one in currently being reassembled in Japan – except this one could actually walk. That would be awesome. If he is successful, I hope he builds an Atlas Mech after that. I want one with jet packs and a rail gun on each arm please.

[via Twitter via Plasticpals]

This special vending machine uses drips of coffee poured carefully through milk to form a face on the top of your hot beverage. In this particular case, it makes the face of a woman, floating in your foamy cuppa cappu. Apparently, that’s a pattern that Yojiya Cafe teaches its human baristas to make too. Here’s a video clip of the machine working it’s magic. Trust me when I say that since it does all of its tricks behind closed doors, it’s not very thrilling though.

Heck, there could be a little tiny barista in there doing that for all I know. From what I can tell, the face is the only pattern this machine makes, but it would be cool if you could pick from others. I’m sure they’ll eventually figure that out if they haven’t already.

This particular machine is located at the Yojiya Cafe in Haneda Airport if you happen to be in Tokyo and want to check it out for yourself.

[via YouTube]