One of the interesting things about visiting Japan is the combination of the past and the future. Last time I talked about the past, the Great Buddha of Kamakura, and now I want to talk about the future, which I saw at the Panasonic Center on Odaiba. They have a public showroom, which is sort of like one of those “house of the future” exhibits from the 60s with robot butlers and talking houses, but since most of the signs are in Japanese and photography is discouraged in the majority of areas, it’s hard for me to relate it all to you. There were cool new digital cameras, 3D televisions, the biggest plasma TV ever made, a bunch of eco-friendly updates of regular appliances, and something called nanoe (“nano technology plus electricty = nanoe;” no I don’t know what it means). But the coolest things we saw there were RiSuPia and the Life Wall.

RiSuPia is kind of like a science museum, with all interactive exhibits. I think it’s specifically designed for children, but luckily I have the emotional maturity of a child, so I had a great time. To show how light affects what colors you can see, they give you a bin of colored balls, then tell you to get all the balls of a particular color while the light shining on them changes over and over again, making it almost impossible. Another game taught about lenses by challenging you to quickly bring a random image into focus. My favorite was an air hockey table with digital numbers on it, where you need to allow the prime numbers to enter your goal and deflect everything else. It gets real crazy, real fast. You get a cool gadget to carry around that tells you about the exhibits, and at the end, you can see a big map of RiSuPia that draws a line showing your path throughout the day.

The Life Wall is some kind of hybrid of computer, TV, and, well, a big wall. The presentation started off with an image of a wall, with a fireplace, decorations, and even an image of a TV. The Wall knows who is approaching it, and recognized the presenter, giving her a menu she could wave her hand in front of to choose different things. She played something on the TV, and then blew it up so the entire wall is nothing but the image. You can also control it by waving your hand over the coffee table, or sometimes tapping it. The decorations of the wall can change depending on your mood, and she then showed us a winter scene. She also changed it to a library, and then brought up a picture book to teach children about animals. The book itself is interactive, so whatever info you want about animals can be requested, or animals can be marked as favorites, etc. The climax of the presentation involved me leaving the room to simulate being somewhere else in the house (or perhaps outside) and they could see and talk to me through a camera, and I could see them on a monitor as well. I don’t know how practical it is, but the craziness of the tech (or at least how it was presented) just made me giggle. I want one!