 Honda's human-shaped robot can now run faster, balance itself on uneven surfaces, hop on one foot and pour a drink. Some of its technology may even be used to help out with clean-up operations at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. Honda's demonstration of the revamped "Asimo" on Tuesday at its Tokyo suburban research facility was not only to prove that the bubble-headed childlike machine was more limber and a bit smarter.
"Songs for Japan" hit $10m Milestone 11/28/2011
 Songs For Japan, the unique, star-studded album collection created to help raise money for victims of Japan's 2011 earthquake and tsunami disasters, continues to benefit the survivors through Japanese Red Cross Society. On the 8th of November senior executives from four major music companies – EMI, Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music Group – met with Japanese Red Cross Society Vice President, Yoshiharu Otsuka, in Tokyo to recognise the milestone of $10 million raised and donated from the global sales of Songs For Japan. The occasion was a reception hosted by Frances Moore, chief executive of worldwide recording industry organisation IFPI.
Fast Retailing: Uniqlo Still Going Strong 11/24/2011
 Fast Retailing Co (9983.T), Asia's largest apparel retailer, is sticking to its Uniqlo sales target in Japan, despite a weak start to the fiscal year due to a lack of new products and warm autumn weather, its top executive said. Chairman and Chief Executive Tadashi Yanai told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday that the firm had shrunk the product lineup too deeply at its Uniqlo casual-clothing chain as it focused on core products such as its HeatTech thermal underwear and down jackets.
In Japan Social Gaming Enters Televison 11/21/2011
 New media is colliding with old media as part of a big marketing campaign. Japan’s biggest networks are pushing their social games to new formats, including television and magazines. Three of Japan’s biggest names in mobile and social gaming are to raise their profile whilst finding new business prospects, by adapting their games to television, magazines and comics.
Japan Is Still on the Way to Recovery 11/18/2011
 Advanced economies across the world grew by 0.6 per cent in the third quarter on a particularly strong showing of 1.5 per cent in Japan, the OECD says. This is broadly in line with recent data from other leading economic bodies, pointing to weak overall growth except in some still robust emerging economies.
 Last winter, enterprising South Koreans reportedly found a low-tech answer to a first world problem: To avoid operating cell-phone touchscreens without gloves in freezing weather, they used mini sausages as finger surrogates. Whether or not you choose to believe that people were actually using the so-called meat stylus, it did make the news in Japan. A year later Japanese retailers obviously did read the hand signals for help. Special gloves with conductive fingertips that let people to keep their digits warm and still operate phone and tablet touchscreens are the new hit!
 Android is poised to receive a significant boost in Japan after Yahoo revealed plans to build a dedicated app store for the Google mobile operating system next year, according a report from Japanese tech blog Asiajin. The ‘Yahoo! Market’ store will allow Japanese Android smartphone owners to download applications directly from its site, while local developers will be able to upload apps to the store bypassing Android’s official app store altogether.
 When a 9.0 earthquake struck northern Japan in March, Yukihiro Osawa felt prepared. Like most fishermen in his village on Miyagi Prefecture’s Oshika Peninsula, he docked two of his boats on a nearby island where they would be sheltered from the coming tsunami. He then hurried to shelter, and looked out to sea.
Fujitsu Starting to Sell its Supercomputers 11/08/2011
 Fujitsu Ltd. said Monday it has adapted technology from its K supercomputer, currently the world's fastest, into a commercial model aimed at companies and research institutes requiring high-level computing capabilities. The PRIMEHPC FX10, which has a theoretical processing performance of up to 23,200 trillion computations per second, will be marketed globally, the major high-tech company said.
 NTT Docomo demonstrated a cloud based automatic interpretation service which is currently in development, at Wireless Japan 2011. In this demonstration, docomo staff at the company's research center in Yokosuka read a newspaper article in Japanese, which is then interpreted in real-time and sent to the receiver at the exhibition hall.
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