A decade ago, the first trade show I ever visited in Japan was Wireless Japan. I was dying to see the new 3G network phones and cutting edge wireless technology that was the envy of consumers around the world. Ostensibly my main goal revolved on finding out when Japan would add Blackberry service or what alternatives there were in the works. Oh what an absurd rabbit hunt into Wonderland that turned out to be.

This year, as is tradition, I made the trek to Tokyo Big Site to see what I could see. At first, I wondered if the malaise I felt was because things had changed. The venue seemed less full, less energetic. But now I realize the problem is not what has changed, but what has not changed.

Here’s an example. Casio was there with, I kid you not, a Cassiopeia branded barcode scanner running Windows CE.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Had a nice chat with an engineer at the booth about how sad I was that the once revered Casio PDA brand had been completely wiped out years ago and how it would be great if they could find a way to revive it with something new and innovative like the old days.

I spotted the Brother booth showing off their new Air Scouter glasses type display system. I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release next month to learn more about this device which looks like a slightly more dorky version of Google Glasses.

Indeed, the device was very shiny. While the look made me feel like a 1980′s era science teacher, the display was crisp, and seemed by usable, creating a floating screen that felt like a monitor about a foot away from my left eye.

“How’s the power requirements” I asked. “It draws from the USB port so as long as your computer has charge it works” the rep replied.

“ah, cool… Wait… Huh?”

After some roundabout answers we come to the point that there is only one interface available. USB to Windows OS. When I asked by there was no HDMI/VGA/Composite Video interface the rep said, “this was the easiest way”.

Stupid football…

It’s like no one there was even trying. Well, one group was. NTT had a huge booth pitching its mobile VOIP solution 050+ which is kinda like Skype where you pay lots of money. But what they lack in ethics or originality, they more than made up in audacity with booth attendants dressed up like idol singers, one of which kept flashing her knee tattoo of the brand logo to me so much I think she must be a soccer player.

Sure there were plenty of Android phones and Apple accessories, but nothing new, nothing interesting. It feels like walking around a 5th grade science fair. Everyone showing off a potato battery and looking at you to praise them for making something so cool.

Meanwhile no one official seems to take this event remotely seriously. While Docomo and Au were there, they mostly had leftovers and hand me downs from other shows and events. Despite its recent launch, there was practically no presence by Docomo’s NotTV, the Nth iteration mobile TV boondoggle that they have spent a fortune marketing. While they had a giant booth with a live TV studio at CEATEC last year, they were happy with a small table in a corner of the Docomo booth here. SoftBank of course boycotts most of these trade shows in Japan, and even OEM giant Huawei just has a tiny booth in a corner of the floor where it looks like they just handed out business cards to anyone curious enough to stop by their spartan space.

I can’t stress enough how wrong this feels. This is Japan. Japan pushed the boundaries of consumer mobile tech to mythical levels before the iPhone showed up. While Americans were excited over a Color LCD screen on their Nokia, Japanese consumers had Digital TV sets in their handset. Sharp made the first mobile Cellular PDA, J-Phone introduced the camera phone, Docomo had the first active 3G network. While the world media was glued to Tim Cook’s speech at D10 today, no one was watching for Japan’s premier wireless technology expo, not even here in Japan.

Except me. Sitting here in the dirt, watching Lucy laugh as she walks away with that football.

The Tokyo Hotaru (firefly) Festival, sponsored by Tokyo Municipal Govt. and other businesses and government entities literally lit up the Sumidagawa river near Asakusa by floating 100,000 small LED lanterns downstream.  The festival, with a heavy Eco-friendly theme highlighted the lanterns, provided by Panasonic, each containing a small solar cell and a rechargeable battery.  The result was a summer festival for a new generation, replacing large fireworks display with a high tech version of an ancient tradition.

This was an excellent opportunity for Panasonic, having recently purchased state of the art eco-tech through their Sanyo acquisition, to highlight their line of LED lightbulbs.  Each of the 100,000 glowing balls dumped into the river contained a high power LED bulb and an Evolta rechargeable battery.  I was very impressed with the overall design of the lanterns, each waterproof ball containing it’s own solar panel recharging system.  Two metal leads on the bottom of each ball creates a circuit, that when floating in water is connected turning on the light.  Simple, elegant and a stunning effect when floating en mass in the water.

(a shot of  my recently obtained Sphero robot pondering joining its friends)

Another winner for this festival is Tokyo Skytree, the new digital broadcast tower that at 634 meters is the second tallest structure in the world.  Officially opening in just a few weeks, the tower is illuminated with thousands of high intensity LED light bulbs (also by, you guessed it, Panasonic), but as part of the festival, the tower was fully illuminated.  The cherry on the cake was the Supermoon rising right behind the tower just as the festival hit full swing.

Last year many festival were cancelled after the 3/11 quake and the full shutdown of all nuclear reactors in Japan has put huge pressure this summer on power conservation efforts, so this festival couldn’t have come at a better time.  A combination of large scale festive, public event, a strong eco-friendly message, and a celebration of the technical ability of the country that was well received at challenging time.  I look forward to more events like this in the future and hope this marks a new tradition.

Tokyo Hotaru Event Webpage

Panasonic Hotaru info page

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NicoNico Douga is a Japanese video sharing and online streaming service. It fills a niche of Pirate Otaku Video so you can imagine what this place was like. Cosplayers, Itasha, Idols, Ikemen Otagei dance performances… ^^;

Saw my friends from Neurowear there doing the Japan launch of the brain wave controlled robot necomimi. Judging by the huge number of girls (and way too many guys for my comfort) wandering around the site I think you could call this a very successful launch.

The event is running today if you are looking for something to do. That is if you have a high tolerance for crowds, blaring loudspeakers, crazy otaku stuff and EM radiation.

http://www.chokaigi.jp/

Lots of Itasha offer video games playing anywhere, anytime.

Of course I was most interested in drooling over the production equipment.

Plenty to check out if you are into cars or cosplayers too!

A crazy Otaku dance-off. I have no explanation ^^;

Now that’s my kind of EVA cosplay!

Don’t forget to pick up your necomimi! Here are the creators Tomonori Kagaya and Toshitaka Kamiya. Special launch price at the event.

Also got some free toilet paper from Good Smile company. Asked this nice girl to hold the TP and this is what she did. Is this some kind of thing?

Get there early, I ended up waiting in a line for about an hour in the sun with a few thousand people.

March 3rd in Japan is a holiday called Hinamatsuri or Dolls Festival. It’s a holiday where families erect displays in their home for with traditional Japanese dolls reflecting the Imperial court. The dolls an be very pricey and are passed along within the family from mother to daughter often augmenting the collection along the way with more or nicer dolls.
I remember having one of these displays in the house that belonged to my sister. But what do you do if your little girl is more into lightsabers and spaceships than fancy dresses and princesses? (other than receive constant high gives for having the coolest daughter ever)

Well I found a shop in Nihonbashi that has you covered. Cool dolls here from an entirely different Imperial court there are Vaders and troopers with full Samurai armor and what I am sure are laser sword Katana.

But get it fast cause at $4,000 for a 1 meter high Sith Lord Doll I’m sure they will sell out fast!

Still scheduled to be completed this year, the renovation work on the Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station is still under way. The new domes over the North and South entrances can now be seen popping up from the scaffolding surrounding the building.

For as long as I have known it, Tokyo Station has been an underground building. The Marunouchi side was a quick post war knock off of the original building and has for all intents and purpose been a condemned building for years. This new renovation is supposed to return the building to its pre war original state. I’m dreaming of a new, but classic design that will add visibility and access to the tracks and bring ye station out of its underground cocoon. Tokyo needs a signature station like Grand Central in New York or Moscow subway station. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to see this landmark rise again in a few months.

Read more on Tokyo station here. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tōkyō_Station

Three days and 26 hours in the can. I’m writing this on the train to my last day live streaming the Belgian Beer Weekend Tokyo event at Roppongi Hills Arena. Just 8 hours left!

Had a very fun trial run this week with my gypsy Internet TV studio. I think I’m liking the name “Studio@stevenagata” for this monster of mismatched parts from my closet, computers and electrical tape. So far no major hiccups, but a few minor technical glitches I’ll have to work on.

The biggest problem so far has been errors on the Roland VR-5 mixer causing some of the saved streams to corrupt on closing. I lost a few bits I had meant to save including a music act that I thought went pretty well. Since we are not archiving online the video, I’m afraid, is lost forever. Will have to run some endurance tests to try and nail down the problem. Otherwise I might look into on off board video recorder like an Atmos Ninja.

It’s been fun to see so many friends stop by the event. Hoping a few more might make it by today. Keeping the stream up can be pretty draining so I wasn’t able to chat much, but hope that today will be a bit lighter as I starting together the hang of things.

The event itself has been super cool. Great bands, good food, 62 types of beer and a crowd expected to top 20,000 for the four days. Early metrics showing we’ll beat that number decisively with online viewers. Super thanks to Akoni KK, Rob Van Nylen and Dean Fujii for bringing me on board for this event. Hope to do more like it in the future (I hear talk of a possible fashion show! (^_^) ). Also big props to ace Cameraman and super geek Joseph Tame for putting in 4x hours over the agreed work and covering all the concerts like a pro.

Definitely stop by if you have time today. It’s really a great atmosphere. Or tune in on the livestream at http://bit.ly/bbw2011. More detailed reports on my studio later *I hope*

Ok, first of all I need to come up with a better name than that.

Some work recently has given me the chance to play around with higher level AV gear and in typical fashion I kinda got a bit carried away. A couple of years ago, comrade Danny Choo convinced me to give live streaming a shot, Ustream had just published their iPhone app and I had great fun running around Akihabara streaming micro tours.

I’ll be honest. Personally I watch very little on Ustream, and I NEVER watch my own stuff. The jarring motion when I move the iPhone around makes me carsick in about three seconds. But I do see a strong value there if things are done well, and simply put, I love the gadgets.

In the world of content, the combination of real time and video is the tip of the sword, and combining valuable content, modern technology, and logistical planning can create a new level of communication never before seen. Yeah, it’s basically cable access tv spliced onto the Internet, but think about it. Cable access tv spliced to the Internet. The potential to waste time in vain pursuits shared equally with the power to topple governments.

But I digress. What I am really talking about is the opportunity for Steve to play with gear. And Steve likey the toys.

The studio I’ve set up is man-portable, folding up into a few large equipment boxes. Not fun to trudge around town with, but in a pinch a single person should be able to transport all the gear in one trip to set up pretty much anywhere.

Based around a Roland VR-5 video mixing board, up to three live video feeds can be mixed with pre-recorded media and computer output and output via built in USB interface to a computer. I’ve got a Mac mini set up as a media server/titleing machine and a MacBook air with Ustream Pro as the primary uplink computer. Of course it can just as easily output to Twitcasting, Livestream, or Vidcaster. There is also a Behringer Xenyx 1002FX audio mixer to augment the VR-5′s more basic sound mixing capabilities, and a Shure SM48 dynamic microphone, as well as an old classic iPod for audio. Finally I threw in a cheapie crapgadget 10 inch display that can serve as a display for the Mac mini, and output or preview monitor for the VR-5.

The end result of all of this is a setup that could theoretically be handled through the Ustream Pro software interface, but in practice would overload a server class computer in seconds. And what can I say, I really, really like having lots of buttons and dials to work with rather than fiddling with setup menus and drop down options.

Serving as cameras I have my aging Sony HDR-CX520 camcorder and my new wireless cambot. If I continue down this path of destruction I’ll likely have to augment this and am stealing glances at the new Sony NEX-VG20 as a possible future addition.

Combined, this setup allows me to effectively run a small live TV production studio. Better yet, I can move it around and set the whole thing up pretty much anywhere (with an Internet connection) in about an hour (a bit slow due to my phobia of wires). I’ll be running the first production test of this full setup at the Belgian Beer Weekend at Roppongi Hills this coming weekend if anyone wants to check it out in person, and hope to be able to push the power of the studio in some other projects in development. Of course if anyone is interested in hiring my studio to stream an event , i’d love the help to offset the cost of the equipment. As they say, no job too small, no fee too big!

Of course as with all of my creations the studio is a work in progress and I’ll be enhancing and tweaking along the way. Always looking for suggestions on improving the setup or new gear recommendations so if you have any thoughts, please drop a line in the comments.

Just put the finishing touches on my new wireless camera platform. It’s still a bit rough and I know there’s a revision on the way, but it came out surprisingly well for a first draft.

The head is a .3 MP CCD camera attached to a 1.2 ghz wireless transmitter. The antenna for the transmitter makes up the right arm and I threw in an LED lamp for a left arm for balance. Loose cables and a monster 6,800 maH LiOn battery fill the backpack.

Range is a bit of a problem. I think it will reliably transmit about 10 meters with Line of sight, maybe further, but indoors through walls that’s about the limit. I need to work on an improved antenna for the receiver to improve that range.

It’s basically just a webcam on a tripod (an old Gorillapod I had lying around) but I wanted to do something fun with it. It’s pretty fun to put it on a table somewhere and have people say “hi”. I guess future versions can add things like a pivot head and facial recognition, as well as a mobile base to turn it into a full robot, but overall not a bad project with some random parts I had lying around and about $10 in pieces for the body.

What do you think? What does the next draft need?

On a walk this afternoon through the Akihabara area I found a neat little space. About three blocks north of Akiba station, hidden under the tracks is this gem. Last time I saw this area, it was a dark and kinda scary storage space. Actually I thought about using it as a backdrop for some photography projects. Now, it’s been cleaned up, painted and converted into a mini artspace.

There is a large open gallery, lots of small boutique shops typical hipster goods. Even a cafe with free wifi, power plugs and free to use iPads! With comiket in town, Akiba is even more packed than normal, but just a few hundred meters off the main drag this space is quiet and cool.

Not sure how long this will last, but if you need a quiet break near Akihabara, might be fun to check it out.

2k540 AKI-OKA ARTISAN
http://www.jrtk.jp/2k540/

Oooo So many toys!

Made some updates to my desk so I thought I would throw down a quick post.

First of all, I found this great flexible arm for iPads at the Rare Mono shop in Akihabara.  I’m not entirely sold on the positioning right now.  it’s a bit high and I don’t have quite the range of motion I would like, but it does work pretty well.  It’s particularly nice when using it to stream media (like old Firefly episodes) while I am typing away.  As an added bonus I can slave the screen and use it for a second monitor.  It’s also a pretty good setup for using the iPad with facetime and Skype for videoconferencing.  Would be perfect for Google+ hangouts, but no support on iOS yet.

Also added a lamp, mainly to help or videoconferencing.  Unfortunately monitor light alone makes me look even more zombielike than usual so the added light should help keep The Walking Dead references to a minimum.

The desk is getting pretty crowded with all the gear loaded up on it.  I’m sure I get more than my recommended daily allowance of EM radiation from all of this.  But what would I do without my toys?

Anyone care to try to identify the rest of the gear in the shot?