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A Japanese conveyor-belt restaurant will use AI cameras to combat 'sushi terrorism'
A viral video trend that has seen people tamper with food and soy sauce bottles has caused outrage in Japan. One conveyor-belt restaurant chain plans to use AI cameras to catch perpetrators.
A sushi restaurant chain in Japan is using AI to evaluate tuna cuts
A Japanese advertising agency has created an app that uses AI to allow humans to easily grade the quality of a tuna cut.
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.
This little delivery robot is carrying a belly full of sushi
If you thought that food-delivery robots originated in futuristic, 'bot-obsessed Japan, you'd be wrong. In fact, delivery robots showed up in San Francisco, London and Los Angeles first. Now, however, cute little red sushi-delivery 'bots from ZMP are headed to the office parks and non-sidewalk areas of Japan, according to a report on RocketNews24.
Daily App: Sooshi is a visual guide to preparing and eating sushi
Whether you are sushi connoisseur or new to the world of eating raw fish, you should check out this new app, Sooshi. A collaborative effort by three German students (Konstantin Datz, Moritz Von Volkmann and Leonard Hecker), Sooshi contains a wealth of information on the ingredients, utensils and fish used to prepare the highly desirable dishes. First and foremost, Sooshi is a guide to all things sushi. The app is broken down into five sections -- sushi, utensils, fish, ingredients and restaurants. Each section includes gorgeous photos of the different materials you need to prepare sushi. Accompanying each photo is a short, but informative description of the item and the role it plays in sushi. There also are detailed instructions that walk you through the preparation of the dish. Each step in the recipe features a photo, a description and a timer when there is a step that requires cooking. Last, but not least is a restaurant finder that lists local restaurants that serve this delicacy. You can search in your local area or enter in an address. The restaurant listings provide the address, phone, website, photos and a navigation link to the address in Google Maps. Sooshi is visually driven with a gesture-based UI that is easy to navigate. The app has a nice balance of informative text and graphics, so you never feel overwhelmed by the content within the app. To say it is well-designed is an understatement -- it's one of those apps that leaves you impressed and makes you appreciate the iOS platform. Sooshi is available for US$1.99 from the iOS App Store. It is compatible with the iPhone running iOS 6.1 or later.
Video: London resturant delivers food via iPad-controlled quadrocopter
A restaurant here in London is delivering its customers' food orders in a unique way: via an iPad-controlled quadrocopter. The Yo! Sushi restaurant in Soho is promoting its new sushi burgers by delivering them to diners' tables via the "iTray" -- a quadrocopter fitted with a tray for the food, controlled by an iPad. If you've eaten at a Yo! Sushi before, you know that the company likes innovative ways of delivering its food. Its restaurants currently feature conveyor belts where diners can lift the items they want as they crawl past their tables. While I give the company props for finding a creative techie way to promote its new menu item, I'm not sure if you can call something that uses fish as the main ingredient a "burger."
Suzumo SushiBot pumps out 300 Kwik-E-Mart rolls per hour (video)
We tend to avoid scooping up sushi whenever there's no chef in sight -- at, say, a grocery store, or a gas station -- but we've always assumed there was a human cranking out maki somewhere behind the scenes. If Suzumo's SushiBot makes it to the production line, that may no longer be the case. The compact machine doesn't exude beauty in the traditional sense, but what it lacks in elegance it easily makes up with efficiency. The contraption can plop down rice clumps for nigiri at a rate of 3,600 per hour, and -- perhaps even more impressively -- it can construct one complete sushi roll every 12 seconds, with some human assistance to place fish on the rice. We tend to like the imperfect handmade feel of the traditional Japanese delight, and we're surely not alone, so don't expect to see one these pop up in your neighborhood Asian eatery. Supermarkets, hospitals and airline caterers may be more likely to pick up a SushiBot, however. Hungry? Intrigued? Roll past the break to see how it works.
Steve Jobs's long and complex relationship with Japan
Japanese writer Hayashi Nobuyuki has written a thoughtful article on Steve Jobs and Japan, covering both the professional and personal influences that helped shape Jobs's path through life and with Apple. The piece has been translated into English, and it's worth a read. Jobs considered himself a practicing Buddhist most of his adult life, and was a student of the Sōtō Zen monk Otogawa Kōbun; Otogawa even served as the "spiritual advisor" for NeXT. Apparently, Jobs's enthusiasm for Zen study once led him to threaten to retreat from the world and ensconce himself in a Sōtō temple in Japan. Jobs's affection for Japanese culture and cuisine even led him to 'bend' his strict vegan diet when it came to sushi; he was a frequent customer of the Kaygetsu restaurant in Silicon Valley, and he relished the raw fish delicacies in dinners with family and colleagues. When Jobs learned that the restaurant was set to close this year (which it did, two days after Steve's death in early October), he approached the restaurant's chef with a job offer. The same dishes that Steve enjoyed are now featured on the bill of fare at Apple's campus cafeteria. Thanks Rick! photo by Mike Tex | Flickr CC
TUAW's Daily App: Seafood Watch
Here's another Daily App choice that's a little more practical than a lot of the games we've been covering lately. Seafood Watch is an app updated with information about fish from all over the world, letting you see at a glance where the fish you're eating probably came from and not only how nutritious it is for you, but how good for the environment as well. The app is designed by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and finding information about the fish on your table or at your supermarket is as easy as pulling up a guide to browse, doing a search for the fish name or even checking around your location. Plus, as New Year's Eve is tonight, there's even a sushi guide. So when the sushi gets passed around a little before midnight, you can take a look at the guide and know exactly where that sashimi came from. Seafood Watch is a free download from the App Store for the iPhone. Have a safe and happy New Year's Eve tonight!
Found Footage: Sharp says 'sushi please' on iPad
Lots of visual content, quick transactions, and hungry customers: that's what Sharp has in mind with this proof of concept sushi menu application for iPad. Rather than putting diners through the chore of tracking down their favorite rolls and sashimi in a multipage laminated paper menu, the app puts dishes front and center. The iPad app isn't for sale yet, although the DigInfo report quotes Sharp saying it may be commercialized if there's interest; it might also be ported to Sharp-built devices. If it does get rolled out, it would be included as an integrated piece of Sharp's POS system for restaurants, including billing and order management tools. We've seen systems like this tested before, but as far as we've heard, no one's actually using iPads in real-life restaurants and at least one Australian tapas joint has already gotten on the bandwagon. If you've seen a virtual menu in action, let us know in the comments. [via Guy Kawasaki]
Chef Robot makes its video debut, nightmares forthcoming
Sure, a few still photos of the sushi-making Chef Robot now on display at the International Food Machinery and Technology Exhibition in Tokyo are all well and good, but there's nothing quite like a high def video to really bring all that creepiness home, and one has now surfaced courtesy of the brave folks at DigInfo. In case you missed it, the robot itself is actually just a standard issue FANUC M-430iA robot arm with a way too realistic hand attached to it, which apparently not only helps it prepare sushi, but some tasty desserts as well. Head on past the break for the must-see video, you've nothing to lose but your ability to unsee it.
Chef Robot makes sushi even more dangerous
If you're squeamish about eating sushi then we doubt this is going to help. Chef Robot, on display at the International Food Machinery and Technology Exhibition in Tokyo, is really just FANUC's M-430iA sanitary food and pharmaceutical robot with a fleshy appendage -- guess the rest of the human is right there on the serving tray. Soylent Green is people![Via TokyoMango]
Noby Noby Sushi
The Noby Noby Boy website has a lot of DIY crafts, but the Noby sushi roll looks nommy and makes us hungry. Siliconera took note of the culinary concoction and we immediately put our interns to work making them -- then we realized we didn't have interns and went to the kitchen to learn it ourselves. Funny (sad) thing is our Japanese is tragic and we don't exactly recognize all the ingredients (image after the break), so please feel free to leave instructions in the comments below.
THQ Wireless releases Chop Sushi to the App Store
Chop Sushi is a brand new game from our friends at THQ in the App Store that combines a love of the Japanese raw fish dish with an interesting twist on the kind of gem-matching battle gameplay that Puzzle Quest made famous (and addictive) a few years ago. It's still a matching game, except you're matching wasabi and rolls instead of gems and skulls, and instead of choosing one gem to switch another, you choose a piece and then swipe it to the end of a row or column, making a match anywhere on the board (as the rest of the pieces fill in for the one you moved). It's hard to explain, but easy to pick up, and tough to master -- the different movements make this one worth a look even if you've played Puzzle Quest or any of its spiritual successors 'till exhaustion. Like other match-3 RPGs out there, there's both an adventure and a quick battle mode, as well as a challenge mode where you've got to match everything on the board together until it's all gone, so there's plenty of gameplay to go around. And the "slide" instead of "switch" mechanic keeps things fresh enough that you'll be looking for lots of new ways to make matches while playing. Chop Sushi is definitely worth a look -- it's in the App Store right now for $2.99.
Murloc bento box looks strangely tasty
A "bento" or "bento box" is a prepared meal in Japanese culture consisting of rice, some kind of meat (often sushi), and cooked vegetables. The big image above is a Murloc bento, put together by a WoW fan with some excellent culinary taste. The Murloc itself is made of cabbage, dyed tofu, and red and yellow pepper stripes, the hut to his left is made of Thai turkey meatballs and steamed cabbage, and the treasure chest is made of tofu and seaweed, while the sun and flowers are eggs.Very interesting. It's still a work-in-progress apparently (though considering that it's all food, it can't take too long to make, can it?), as the creator still wants to get teeth on the Murloc. But it looks pretty ready to eat as is -- the hut and the treasure chest, especially, look pretty delectable. [via PixelatedGeek, thanks, jessE!]
Japanese mobile game rewards players with real fish
It used to be that just getting a high score was the be all and end all of game accomplishments. More recently, amassing Achievement points became the all-consuming passion of gamers. Now even that seems passé as a new Japanese cell phone game rewards played with real, raw fish delivered right to their door.Ippon Zuri ("pole-and-line fishing" in English) lets DoCoMo users in Japan's Fukuoka area set bait, cast their lines and wait for the virtual fish to bite. When they do, a slot machine game appears and, if all three numbers match up, the fish is caught and, as Pink Tentacle describes it, "a message is then relayed to the wholesaler, who picks up the real-world equivalent from the local seafood market and delivers it, whole and raw, to the player's doorstep." Kind of reminds us of Activision's Atari 2600 badge program, except updated for the new millennium ... and with raw fish!We think this is a great idea, and can't wait for the concept to be applied across the gaming world. Win a real trophy for success at virtual sports games! Win real cash for success at virtual game shows! Win a real disembodied skull for success at a first-person shooter! Er ... scratch that last one.[Via BB Gadgets]
Kansei makes a comeback with reactive facial expressions
Quite a lot has transpired in the android universe in the past two years, and it's fairly safe to say that Kansei has made a few solid strides during that time as well. A Japanese research team has purportedly crafted a working prototype that can "pull up to 36 different facial expressions based on a program which creates word associations from a self-updating online database of 500,000 keywords." According to a professor at Meiji University's School of Science and Technology, the idea of the project is to "create a flow of consciousness in robots so that they can make the relevant facial expressions," and the device relies on 19 movable parts and a silicon face mask in order to work its magic. Developers also noted that speech abilities should be added within a few years, and while we doubt you had to guess, it's quite likely that fully developed Kanseis will one day roam nursing homes as Japan seeks to care for its quickly growing geriatric set.
