This is an interactive optic fiber cloth. It is made of side-emitting diffusive optic fibers so computer controlled light patterns can be displayed on it, and by attaching light receivers as well as light emitters, optical signals can be input using infrared light.

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) released in June 2013 its newly developed "KoeTra," a free application for smart phones and tablet terminals (now available for iOS), which supports better communication between the hearing-impaired and the non-hearing-impaired. Using speech recognition and synthesis technologies, KoeTra converts text into speech, and speech into Japanese text.

After decades drowning in deflation, Japan’s property market is re-emerging, with average prices for new condos in Tokyo hitting levels not seen since 1992, the Real Estate Economic Institute said this week. If the trend continues and broadens, it could mark a turnaround in the long-dormant financial fortunes of the world's third-largest economy. Such a turnaround is long overdue: Japan’s real estate prices have been falling for nearly 25 years. From 1990 to 2002, falling real estate prices swallowed an estimated $9.3 trillion of the nation’s wealth, according to the Nomura Research Institute.

Suntory Holdings Ltd on Monday said it would buy U.S. spirits company Beam Inc for $13.6 billion cash in a deal that would make the Japanese company the world's third-largest spirits maker. Including the assumption of Beam's net debt, the deal is valued at $16 billion. It brings together Beam's Jim Beam and Maker's Mark bourbons, Courvoisier cognac and Sauza tequila with Suntory's Yamazaki, Hakushu, Hibiki and Kakubin Japanese whiskies, Bowmore Scotch whisky and Midori liqueur.

Your chopsticks can make your food taste better, claims Hashikura Matsukan, a chopstick manufacturer steeped in 400 years of history. But how can you improve on, or reinvent, something that’s been around for so long? Something that’s been refined so many times? It’s just 2 sticks that taper to a point, right? Well that’s exactly where Oki Sato from Nendo turned to, when he was asked to redesign a series of chopsticks.

oyota has again dethroned General Motors as the world's top-selling automaker.  The Japanese company sold 9.7 million cars and trucks worldwide in 2012, although it's still counting. GM sold 9.29 million.  Both companies saw higher sales, but Toyota's growth was far larger as it rolled out new versions of popular models like the Camry. GM executives promised sales growth this year, especially in the U.S. 

The communications ministry and the education ministry will test a new system in which students will be able to access teaching materials on the Internet using tablet computers and other electronic devices both at home and at school, beginning in late fiscal 2014, ministry sources said.

On the final day of trading 2013, Japanese shares closed with an annual gain of 57 percent  the highest ever since 1972. That this occurred this year is no coincidence – Shinzo Abe’s three-pronged strategy for Japan’s economy dubbed “Abenomics” is working. For now. After Japan’s “lost decade” puzzled economists for years, Shinzo Abe in his second term as Prime Minister, with Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, demonstrated that Japan hadn’t in fact tried everything in its economic toolkit.