It’s a known saying that in Tokyo you can really see the future. But again Japanese people surprise us with their ideas.

If you want a spectacular wedding, why not doing it in space? A new service in Japan let you book your space wedding in advance from the now. The new service is being offered by Rocketplane, a company in Japan that plans on space trips, in cooperation with First advantage (a marketing company), and Ladirb, a Japanese wedding planning company.

The guests will have to stay on ground, while you float in a spaceship with your loved one 100km above ground for about an hour. The ceremony will be transmitted live to your guests. You get a video of the ceremony, a photo album, and help with accommodation to your guests.

In order to get on this spaceship you will have to go through four day training. Which will undoubtedly can do miracles to your relationship before the wedding. "Honey, do I look fat in this space suit?" are the kind of question that you will have to deal with. We also don’t guarantee that you won’t get a little dizzy on your wedding night, after floating in outer space.

For this nice original wedding you will have to get 2.22 million dollars or 240 million yen if you live in Japan. That’s a lot cheaper than getting your wife a new luxury house on the coast of San-Francisco, for example. Registration starts next month, and the weddings are planned to start at 2011.

If you met your bride in a Japanese maid café, and you plan on raising a robo-dog, we see no other option than to start this weird family somewhere in the galaxy. And we still don’t want to think what your mother in law will have to say on all of this.

If you are interested, Ladirb is offering also eco-weddings and sport-weddings in a soccer stadium.

More (Japanese): [Space Wedding] via [PinkTentacle]

The name for the tower will be “Tokyo Sky Tree”, or Tōkyō Sukai Tsurii ,and it will be finished in 2011. 610 meters of concrete and steel, in the heart of Tokyo. If you also want a tower like this in your back yard, you should prepare some money. The cost of the tower is estimated in 60 billion yen or 555 million dollars (if you still believe in the dollar).

For those of you that are concerned what will happen to the tower during earthquakes, you should know that in the bottom of the tower you will find a five tier concrete “pagodas” that are supposes to withstand very strong earthquakes.

The tower will have some restaurants in the top, and a TV station – Nothing crazy or weird. What brings us to believe that until the tower will be completed there will be more weird news about robots that will live in the upper floor. We expect no less from the Japanese.

In the mean time you can enjoy more images (click to enlarge):

And a view from the top of the Tokyo Sky Tree

Here is a video of the name unveiling ceremony:

The new bakery calls itself Shirohige no shou cream kobo, which is translated into White-bearded’ cream puff workshop. Don’t miss out the beautiful bakery website.

The bakery is a huge success, and all of 100 puffs made for each day are gone in 10 minutes from opening. Custard and raw cream puffs are sold for $3.60 (390 yen), maron and maron cream puffs are sold for $3.90 (420 yen). All of the ingredients are carefully chosen, and some of them are organic or imported.

via [Japundit] More images here: [mioracle]

After Japanese scientists helped us to enjoy our morning news in the shower, it’s time for them to help us read Japanite! while bathing.

The new plastic laptop case from Thanko in Japan is another crazy idea to help us with modern life – courtesy of the Japanese inventors. The case is the same as freezer bags and can protect your laptop computer from spills, dusts and shocks.

According to Thanko, the case can be extremely useful while cooking with a recipe displayed on your laptop. If you tried this once, you already know that a wrong move at the wrong time, could introduce a pasta sauce directly into the chips of your laptop. And you really don’t want to try this at home.

Price is only $19 (1,980 yen). A pretty good bargain when you consider that an accident with a $2 coffee cup in a café, could mean spending hundreds of dollars for a new computer.

Anyway, you wouldn’t want to take your laptop for a swim. The case is not 100% waterproof and has tiny holes for ventilation in the back.

Some more photos:

Source (Japanese): [Thanko]

If you’ll ever visit Tokyo you will find some weird and strange recreation places. Some will find the Mom Cafés very unique place, others will rather drop for an IV drip to help fight the jetlag, and others may just want to pass the time by eating at McDonalds.

But the latest trend in Japan nowadays is virtual golf. More than 50 golf simulators allow people to get into the action without getting on the grass. The virtual golf players are coming not just for the sports, but also the company.

The company that develops these virtual golf simulators already sold 30 systems with a price tag of $57,000 (6 million yen). One of these virtual golf courses managers tells that most days the bar draws about 30 golfers. On a busy evening more than 60 golfers will come to play. Most of them have played golf before.

It seems that Japanese people love to play virtual golf together. An analyst explains that Japanese people don’t have a strong individualist streak, and many games are best enjoyed when played with friends.

Technology and golf goes great in Japan, so it seems. Several months ago Sony launched a virtual golf caddy that uses the PSP (Playstation portable) GPS unit in order to keep track of your game.

By the way, if you are interested have a golf simulator at home – you can. Full Swing Golf offers complete systems to home customers for a bargain price of $55,000. You can join customers like Donald Trump, Michael Jordan, Kevin Dillon, Richard Marriott (the hotel chain owner). The Swing Golf System even allows you to play online against other rich friends of yours.

Source: [Guardian]

After the Mom Cafes, It’s not so surprising to find out what Japanese people do in cafes. In Tenteki10 you will receive a specially formulated IV drip for $76 (8,000 yen). If you want to save a few dollars on your own body, the basic shot costs only $19 (2000 Yen). The menu includes interesting offerings. For example the Blue Pack will fight fatigue and includes anti-oxidants for your skin. The Green Pack will fight toxic substances in your body. The Sports Pack will ensure strong and flexible muscles before training.

The IV drip is given by nurses after answering a short questionnaire, and the whole process takes no more than 10 minutes. A doctor at the place explains that IV drips are necessary for people suffering from exhaustion, insomnia and backaches. The Doctor adds that the IV Drip contains also some preventive medicine. This new clinic cafe reports that 30 people a day are already visiting the place to get their daily dose. Some come with family or spouse.

We truly sympathize with Japanese office workers that suffer from exhaustion at work. Some of them need to visit more than 10,000 adult websites a day.

More: [Japan Today] and Tenteki10 (Japanese)

Japanese people are love new technologies and gadgets. Even if the gadgets are a bit weird. Take the new laundry dehydrator for example, it looks weird but it’s pretty cool.

Most clothes dryers use heat to dry the clothes. The problem with such dryers is that they use lot of electricity, and sometime even ruin delicate clothes because of the intense heat.

The fast laundry dehydrator uses dehumidification to extract the water out of the clothes within 3-5 minutes. Leaving them dry and without any damage. The only problem is that you have to hold the cloth while doing that, which may require several hours if you aren’t’ doing laundry each day.

According to the manufacturer this process also saves energy, which is good for both your electricity bill and planet earth. The dehydrator from Somela will cost $173 (18,000 yen).

This isn’t the first time Japanese scientists try to re-invent the laundry machine. Back in August, Toshiba introduced a new washing machine that is also a dryer and an air-conditioner. While will someone want this weird washing machine? We have no clue. But Toshiba thinks you’ll pay about $2,949 dollars (310,000 Yen) in order to have this kind of washing machine at home – models not included.

Product age (Japanese): [Rakuten], Translated [Rakuten]

Toshiba Washing machine (Japanese): [Watch Impress]

Not the usual stuff we get from Japan, but any change is welcome. The Mainichi reports today that three guys and a girl tried to make a adult film in a McDonald’s restaurant in the Saitama Prefecture (kind of a district). (Why not just film in a Mom or a maid cafe?)

The happy foursome were Kunikazu Ishii (52), the director, Nahoko Shimada (21) an actress at night, dental nurse at days. The two male actors were Yuya Ochiai (29) and Makoto Nishizumi. They were all arrested for indecent exposure.

A customer reported to the police on the enthusiastic film makers after he saw Ochiai and Shimada getting into the store together holding hands. He suspected something was wrong because “..Ochiai didn’t look the type good enough to pick up a woman (Shimada) like her”. Makes you wonder how come a McDonald’s customer knows what’s good for a adult movies actress. Or maybe he just recognized Shimada and thought that due to her acting skills, she deserves better.

An adult film maker explains to the paper that this is the sign of tough times. Adult movies in Japan had used to get budget of around 1 million yen ($9,500), but this days the budget get only up to 300,000 Yen ($2,800). With these kind of tight budgets the film makers have to cut on costs, and they are filming anywhere to avoid the cost of hotel rooms or a studio. As we already know, it’s even hard to film in Japanese toilets since you’ve got some nasty things going on there.

But filming an Adult movie at McDonald’s may also have other benefits. In the recent month McDonald’s in Japan introduced some really big meals like the MegaMuffin, MegaMac and MegaTriaki. Any chance the film actor (which is paid considerably less compared to the actress, according to Mainichi) just want to supersize his “whopper” to Mega?

By the way, if you have any funny suggestion for the film makers about the name of the new film – why keep it to yourself? The comments section below will love to hear from you.

Update 1:Nahoko Shimada arrest in a video report: (unfortunately Shimada stage name is not known)

Update 2: You shouldn’t be surprise about what happens in McDonald’s in Japan with these kind of commercials:

Update 3: Join a punchline contest at [Antsmarching.org] !

Source: [Mainichi]

A new robot is supposed to clean urinals. The engineers at Mertec Engineering, the company that brought us this life-changing invention, claim that the robot can save eight liters of water while cleaning urinals. And it does this in only 10 seconds. If you happen to be in Kobe airport, you can watch the invention in action.

The robot is called “DASUBEE” that after the letters DCBA, which are ACBC backwards. The origin for that name is the reverse process which help the robot clean the urinals. No points on copywriting here.

Anyway, If you want it to help you with your cleaning chores, you should prepare to cough up 1,000,000 Yen, which are like $9,600. Let us save you the calculation, you can buy lot’s of brushes and detergent with this kind of money. In the mean time you can relax with a bunch of robots killing each other or some useless robots.

More: [3yen]

Source (Japanese): [Robot Watch]

Japan tombstone maker, Ishinokoe, is offering now a barcode on tombstones. Pointing your mobile phone camera at the barcode, sends the phone to a specially assigned site that can show pictures and videos of the RIP.

Two dimensional barcodes or QR barcodes are very popular in Japan. They can offer information from posters, bus stops, food packaging and more. The pleasure of having a “tombstone 2.0″ is one million yen or almost $10,000. How can you put a price on still yelling at your spouse from the grave?

The video is right here:

More from [Reuters]

And of course for orders: [Ishinokoe]