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The 1970 World’s Fair in Osaka, the first to be held in Japan, was full of retro-futuristic architectural splendor. Here’s a look at just a few of its strange sights. More »
Although it’s not as scary as the spooky Big Dog—actually, it looks as friendly as the hilarious Fake Big Dog—I can imagine this prototype of a security robot dog developing into something capable running at 80kph behind you and tearing apart your thorax with pure steel fangs and claws. Fortunately, for now the rest of the videos show him to be friendlier than my own furry best friend.
In a cafe deep in the heart of Amerikamura, Osaka, tables of otaku are sitting down to tea and cake with women old enough to be their mothers. Mother Café is an otaku fetishist establishment staffed with women that give off a motherly vibe; maid cafés are so yesterday.
A series of demo runs were held with the Robovie robot in the Universal Citywalk Osaka shopping centre earlier this week in Japan trying to see how good the droid is at helping out lost shoppers. Here’s how it works.
Super Potato wasn’t the only place Ashcraft took me in Osaka; no, that was just one small taste of our tour. We explored all of Den Den Town, which is Osaka’s version of Akihabara: a geek centre full of electronics, manga, and video game shops. And unlike Akihabara, it hasn’t sold itself out to tourists.
Japan is set to launch it’s first building-mounted free-fall ride in an exterior wall of Osaka’s $US157 million 12-story namBa H!PS entertainment complex set to open this December. The ride will provide guests with a beautiful view of the city right before it drops them 60 metres down the side of the building at 80 kph. This will undoubtedly result in an all-natural, and rather rancid type of graffiti adorning the building – not to mention one seriously pissed off janitor. [Pink Tentacle] More »
