Nipponica

The Tokyo metropolitan government has launched an artificial intelligence system that uses high-altitude cameras to detect fires and building collapses in real-time to accelerate its initial disaster response during major earthquakes.

The AI-driven system analyzes footage from high-resolution cameras, with two installed at the Tokyo metropolitan government building and one each at a bridge near Tokyo Bay and a location in the western part of the metropolitan area, the local authorities and system developer Hitachi Ltd. said.

This December, in line with integrating Japan's health insurance cards with the "My Number" IC-chipped ID cards, existing ones will in principle be discontinued. A July 20-21 Mainichi Shimbun poll revealed that despite hopes for improved convenience and other benefits as part of the government's push toward a digital society, fears remain strong over data protection and other matters, and opposition to the government's handling proved more conspicuous than criticism of the new system itself.

Communication from government is key. But also actions (and in this case inaction) are important. The several My Number-related controversies over the past few years have severely impacted the public's perception of an already unpopular system. The Digital Agency needs better PR (and better quality assurance) to make the future of this system less bleak.

The annual number of telegrams the NTT group handles peaked at about 95 million in the 1960s, when the group was still Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public, and plummeted 96% in about 60 years to about 3.8 million amid the spread of more accessible online communication methods such as email and messaging apps.

The most common reason for using telegrams was emergency communication during the peak period, accounting for 86%, but congratulatory and condolence messages have accounted for over 90% in recent years.

News to me.

The bus will travel at speeds of up to 12 kph along an 800-meter loop of road at the Haneda Innovation City complex in Ota Ward, Tokyo. For the time being, a staff member will be aboard the bus, which can carry 11 passengers, and may switch to manual operation in some situations. The bus’s operations will be monitored from a base in Ibaraki Prefecture.

Tokyo Disneyland on Wednesday closed its highly popular Space Mountain ride for renovations until 2027, its operator said, after the roller coaster traveled a total of 22.6 million kilometers since its maiden voyage in 1983, equivalent to 29 round trips between the Earth and Moon.

While its general design will not change significantly, new sound and lighting effects promise to dazzle guests even further, said Oriental Land Co., which will invest around 56 billion yen ($372 million) in the makeover.

Pour one out for one of the classics. I do trust that Oriental Land Company will actually improve the ride as their work over the past decade has usually been exceptional compared to the drastic decline of the Disney parks on the other side of the Pacific.

Japan's last three sets of "UFO-style" traffic lights will be removed from intersections in this Miyagi Prefecture capital at the end of July due to aging, but in fact, a similar set is still working in Nagoya.

These traffic lights have been popularly known as "UFO style" because of their unique shape, floating in midair while emitting green, yellow and red lights in all directions. Developed by a manufacturer in Aichi Prefecture in the 1970s, there used to be a total of around a dozen units in prefectures including Aichi and Miyagi. Local residents in Sendai who have been accustomed to them over the years are sad to say goodbye, but their "gene" is still alive in their hometown Nagoya.

I have never seen these before in real life but I do love the design. I can see that they would only work well over narrow roads due to the all the signaling being centered over the intersection, but it is quite a cool thing.

E-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. on Tuesday started online prescriptions and medicine delivery services in Japan in cooperation with some 2,500 drug stores across the country, the retailer's Japan unit said.

While people are now able to obtain medicine without visiting pharmacies through the Amazon Pharmacy service, it means small- and medium-sized pharmacies lagging behind in digitalization may face difficulties continuing their businesses.

Over a year has passed since the PDAS-X06 unmanned experimental aircraft, part of a space travel project, crashed into the sea off Shimojishima Airport in the city of Miyakojima, Okinawa Prefecture.

PD Aerospace, the Nagoya-based developer of the aircraft, aims to realize space travel by manned spacecraft from the airport under the Shimojishima Spaceport Project, which was signed between the company and Okinawa Prefecture in September 2020.

Under the project, the company’s spacecraft, which is designed to fly to an altitude of 100 kilometers, will allow passengers to experience a state of weightlessness for about five minutes. Originally, the company had planned to launch space travel in 2025, sending 100 passengers to space that year and gradually increasing capacity to 1,000 by 2030.

With this story and the previous one about Hokkaido Spaceport, Japanese industry is making up for lost time in the new space race. While JAXA is far from a small player in the industry, it is small in comparison to the legacy space states. But, experimentation like this could be vital to the next generation of spacecraft and there could be a breakthrough in the testing on Miyako.

Located on the Pacific coast, Taiki, with 5,300 people, is home to the Hokkaido Spaceport (HOSPO), billed as Asia’s first privately operated spaceport, which the town first proposed nearly 40 years ago.

Since 2008, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has been carrying out experiments involving scientific balloon, aeronautical technology and the Hayabusa2 laser altimeter at HOSPO following the signing of an agreement with the town.

But now, HOSPO is aiming to become one of Japan’s major domestic spaceports for launching satellite-equipped rockets and spacecraft as well as for the aerospace industry to conduct research and development.

In the meantime, determining a tsunami’s arrival time on shore could still prove to be an essential part of tsunami warning systems, given the density of the cable network in the Pacific Ocean.

“Optical fiber cable is everywhere offshore,” Aoki says, while noting that the network is far less developed on the Sea of Japan side given political sensitivities with Japan’s neighbors. “Using optical cable is a promising tool to quickly understand the arrival time of tsunami.”

This is a very innovative idea to leverage existing data infrastructure to dramatically increase seismic tracking. Also an interesting history of the current system of seismographs that power Japan's earthquake & tsunami early warning system.