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Postmodern dining with the Japanese art of useless gadgets
The Japanese word "chindogu" covers a delightful range of terrible gadgets. It's about vaguely genius concepts, ruined either in their execution or ambition. If you've seen the baby-floor-mop onesie or the upside-down umbrella for capturing rainwater, you've seen a chindogu. Yo Sushi, arguably the UK's biggest sushi chain, wanted to celebrate this ridiculous facet of Japanese culture, and invited me to embarrass myself through a selection of crapgadgets and tasting dishes.
ICYMI: Ramen by drone, creepy robot gloves and the week in sum
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-45672{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-45672, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-45672{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-45672").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: A Caltech research team is studying a species of jellyfish to see if its ability to rearrange limbs when injured could be used by the robots of the future; a Harvard glove prototype could restore gripping abilities in people with disabilities, but man is it the creepiest, alien-looking glove we've ever seen. We're also including a great video of a ramen-making machine that has optional drone delivery; at which point we call bulls**t.
Cameraphone app analyzes your meal, disgusts you with factual calorie counts
It's a hard truth that's easy to swallow: our cubicle-dwelling lifestyles often get the best of our waistlines. We try to diet, but without a never-ending pile of Cheetos and Chicken McNuggets next to our laptops, we feel so very, very, very....alone. Luckily a Japanese company has developed a software companion to keep us company on our slimming endeavors: it's an app that will analyze a photo of your meal and tell you how many calories you're about to consume. While it can't actually prevent the food from hopping down our throats (2.0, maybe?) it will allow your meal's calorie content to be socially networked with your friends' meals' calorie contents, creating a weird long-distance eating competition with other connected dieters. But hold the Pad See Ew -- while it's good at figuring out Japanese staples, it's "not so good on stuff like Thai food." [Photo courtesy tnarik's flickr]
Review: Monster Hunter 3 (Ramen)
No, this is not a hands-on preview of the upcoming US release of Monster Hunter 3. (You'll have to wait until next year for that!) Nor is this a review of the Japanese release. (You can, instead, read our hands-on preview from TGS.) This is the next best thing: a review of the limited edition Monster Hunter 3 ramen -- or "hunta-men" as the packaging states.Available for 200 yen (about $2.20), this packaged instant ramen is surprisingly good, featuring a hearty meaty taste and slight spicy kick. There are even dried meat pieces floating in the soup. While it may actually be beef, we're going to pretend it's dragon meat, because that's what a real monster hunter would eat, right?
Japanese scientists craft planet's smallest ramen bowl
Now that just looks extra scrumptious, doesn't it? What you're peering at above is believed to be the world's tiniest ramen bowl, created by a clever bunch of scientists from the University of Tokyo. Reportedly, Masayuki Nakao and his students "used a carbon-based material to produce a noodle bowl with a diameter 1 / 25,000 of an inch in a project aimed at developing nanotube-processing technology." In other words, they carved a bowl out of nanotubes, which can now only be viewed through a microscope. Best of all, they didn't stop with just the dinnerware, as they managed to insert a number of inedible noodles to round things off -- each of which measured "one-12,500th of an inch in length with a thickness of one-1.25 millionth of an inch." Don't get any bright ideas here, McDonald's, ditching SuperSize was bad enough.
Saturday: ramen eating contest, Sunday-Tuesday: cleanup
In order to promote their new Wii game, D3 Publisher and Tomy will hold the Naruto Clash of Ninja Revolution World Ramen Noodle Eating Championship at the Nintendo World Store this Saturday. Apparently-well-known champion eaters will come to compete at the chopsticks-only event, including "Crazy Legs Conti, a man who once ate his way out of an 96-cubic foot box of popcorn." Tens of dollars worth of ramen will be consumed at this event, which is only part of the Narutosity taking place at the NWS.The store will also have stations set up for visitors to try out the game (the Naruto game, not the eating-a-bunch-of-ramen game) and play the Naruto CCG. In addition, special gifts will be handed out to 1500 people who dare to walk around New York City in those headband things. Perhaps most excitingly, a one-of-a-kind Naruto DS Lite will be given away. Will it smell like chicken broth? Probably!
First HD DVD/DVD Twin disc hits U.S. in June, along with new HDi features
Add one more dual format disc type to the pile, as Bandai Visual will bring the HD DVD/DVD Twin disc to the U.S. June 26, with the release of its bestselling OVA Freedom, and will also be one of the first releases to include HDi network capabilities. As opposed to the combo releases so far that have HD DVD on one side, and DVD on the other, the Twin disc allows up to three layers of either HD DVD or DVD content on the same side of the disc, no flipping necessary. Your old-school DVD player might have trouble with the disc, so its been limited to Japan-only releases so far. Bandai's been working with Microsoft and Memory-Tech to tweak the VC-1 codec for Japanese anime, and the company says after this they will start releasing other HD DVD and Blu-ray titles in Japan and overseas. The SRP for Freedom Vol.1 (of 6) is $39.99 and while we don't know much about the series beyond its mix of CGI and 2D animation, it does heavily represent that most holiest of foods, ramen.
