Panasonic Japan announced a video-conferencing system dubbed the KX-VC500. It will allow you to use HD-quality screens for communicating. It’s pretty interesting and takes the video conference to a new level. Connections will be made over the web and allow for HD-quality video going both ways.

It doesn’t come with a microphone and a camera however, so you’ll have to use an HD camera of your own choosing. You can use the unit with any HD screen and it has an RGB interface and two HDMI ports. A remote control is included.

Note to Japan. Trying to make dog poop fun by making this dog poop composter look like a robotic dog just ain’t cutting it. Poop is gross. Dog poop is gross. You can’t make it fun. You just can’t. Please stop trying to make poop fun.

I mean you put the poop in the dog’s mouth. I know some troubled dogs eat their own, but still. It’s called Sum, a robotic trash can designed by Tohoku Kankyo. Just open the dog’s mouth, insert poop and old food, and it’ll break it down and make it not stinky. It can take about 600 grams of poop or food per day. Does the broken down poop and food then come out of robo-dog’s butt?

It’s been pretty quiet on the whole Wii video in Japan front, but finally there’s some news. Japanese Wii users will soon be able to try it out for themselves. The service is ready to launch in Japan on May 1st.

It’s being called the “Wii no Ma Channel,” and features advertising from Denstu, both free and paid content. What really caught our eye though, is word that a free DSi app will be launching at the same time. The app will allow you to download video from the Wii to your DS, and do other stuff like download coupons from advertisers, which can be scanned directly from the screen.

If you thought the Android platform was just for netbooks and cell phones, think again. This free operating system from Google just may take over the entire gadget world yet. Who would have thought it would show up in a TV set top box from KDDI of Japan.

Android is an attractive proposition for budget-conscious gadget makers due to its free and open license. Motorola is first to release its new set top box in Japan, known as the au Box. The au Box can be used to do things like rip, store and playback digital movies and audio over your TV etc.

They are always coming up with more ways to sell us things. Now a new type of billboard is on the way, displaying ads suited to your individual tastes as you by. The odds are pretty good that a fair amount of these ads will be for fast food and gadgets.

You can thank Yahoo Japan, who plans to install billboards with not only cameras, but also facial analysis tech to identify your age and sex. They will also display content like news and weather. I wonder if that facial analysis will tell teens they need Clearasil.

The unthinkable has happened. For the first time in 16 months, sales of the PS3 in Japan jumped 80% in the last five weeks of March compared to a year ago. At the same time, demand for the Wii went down by almost 63% to 99,335.

You can chalk up at least part of this to the release of a few new popular games like Resident Evil 5. Which helped up the PS3’s sales figures beyond the Wii’s for the first time since November a few years ago. It should also be noted that nearly everyone in Japan seems to already own a Wii.

Silly Japan. You are just inviting the wrath of future robot-things with your antics… Perhaps you like having all of your buildings come down around you. Maybe you don’t mind being flame-broiled by robot breath. All I can say is, you brought it on yourself. Having said that, we do really think this freakish robot baby thing in the streets of Roppongi is pretty frakkin awesome.

“Giant Torayan” is a seven meter tall fire-breathing baby-faced harbinger of death. It’s also the work of artist Kenji Yanobe, who clearly has issues that should never ever be explored by any therapist. Ever. It’s a win/win. We get to see all this cool stuff from Japan, they pay the price later at the hands of a vengeful bot or five-hundred.

The GH1 is looking seriously sexy in red and will be available April 24 in Asia for about ¥150,000. That’s roughly $1,500, which is a bit steep. It may be cheaper when it hits our shores, but that’s still a disappointing price.

The GH1’s video capture mode (The only thing that’s really different from its predecessor, the G1) does things that many others, like Nikon and Canon can’t: the cinema-friendly 24fps framerate at 1080p (60fps at 720p), as well as continuous contrast-based autofocus with a silent-focusing lens.

Japanese manufacturer Amadana recently rolled out the SAL pocket video recorder that records video in MPEG4 format and captures 3MP pictures with its CMOS image sensor. The device measures 54mm x 95mm x 12mm and weighs just 85 grams.

This portable gadget also offers up 2GB of internal memory. You can transfer video and picture files to your PC or laptop via USB port. No word on pricing yet. Looks like the Amadana SAL pocket video recorder will only be available in Japan.

As usual the Japanese have scored something before us. In this case they have an exclusive on this new multi-touch Studio One 19 PC from Dell, which looks kinda sexy. The All-in-One “entertainment PC” comes in a bunch of colors to match your life with specs that include a Core 2 Quad processor, 4GB of memory, 750GB hard disk, 6x USB, integrated 1.3 megapixel webcam, and NVIDIA GeForce 9400 graphics, and a Blu-ray player.

The 18.5 inch display has a 1,366 x 768 aspect ratio with touch or non-touch glass panels. Prices start at about $699 and it will launch in other countries later this spring.

There’s finally an official Japanese release date for Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days in Japan! May 30th, Japanese gamers will be able to play the rpg for 5,980 yen or $60 which is kinda steep for a DS game.

Even steeper is the Kingdom Hearts Louis Vuitton inspired black DSi bundle which costs 24,480 yen or $246! The question is, are you a fan enough of goth Disney to pay those prices?

Check out the image. You tell me if that isn’t the future of human burial. Robots will carry your corpse directly into your dirt bed, deposit you for your dirt nap and go get another rotting human vessel. It’s probably how they will clean up our bodies when they inherit the Earth. But I digress.

This robotic crawler will soon to be inducted in Yokohama’s fire department. It’s designed to carry a human from the disaster zone to safety. In an earthquake rescue workers can load an injured person in the crawler and that person will be carried from the site to relief operations. It has four wheel belts and can easily move over rubble and other obstacles.

You may have noticed that e-book readers are starting to catch on. If this is news to you, you probably don’t own a Kindle. And since reading e-books is all the rage, we should see more manufacturers jump on board in due time.

iriver Japan (not iRiver from Korea) hopes to join in on the reindeer games by releasing their own e-book reader. Their offering looks more ike a rebadged version of the Netronix reader which was released last year. Apparently the iriver Japan device will be capable of handling PDF documents, have a simple joystick control interface, an SD memory card slot and audio file playback.

It wasn’t long after the Blackberry Bold went on sale in Japan, that DoCoMo had to pull it off the shelves after reports of early adopters having possible overheating problems. Of the 4000 units sold, DoCoMo was notified of about 30 such complaints.

The numbers don’t seem that big, but DoCoMo is being cautious and halting sales, pending an investigation from Blackberry . You see, unlike this country, service is big in Japan. So far Blackberry has been able to deduce that the problem is not with the battery and says that this issue is limited to only Japanese Bold phones.

We humans are not immortal, so it’s important that we live on somehow after our bodies turn to worm food. As usual, the Japanese can help in their usual creepy way.

‘Oboe’ is designed to hang out with the elderly, so that it can absorb knowledge, experiences and, well everything that reminds you of your loved ones before they die. This way as much of their “essence” as possible will live on. You can see how the future might play out with “Oboe”. We continue to live, in a sense, in robot form.