Train your brain
Another sighting on Sega's stand at the 2004 Japan Toy Show: The Brainpower Trainer, developed with Tohoku University professor Ryuta Kawashima, which forces you to repeatedly tap the answers to simple sums into a calculator-like device and points out to the whole class when you make a mistake and makes everyone laugh at you. All right, not really. We've had several jobs that make us a bit sceptical about the idea of repetitive activities energising one's underused noodle, but Professor Kawashima is a popular author of several books of brain exercises, so we assume he knows what he's talking about. If we're going to be cynical about it, though, we suspect you'd probably do just as well with a Y1,000-ish book as with this Y5,000 device if you were in the market for a cerebral tune-up.
