Sounds of animals and language phonetics.

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When residing in Japan, my friends and I used to have fun around the styles of trivial customs all the international students had. The discussions began when in our Japanese Language textbook (Minna no Nihongo), we found a page that taught us some signs that are commonly used by the Japanese society. From simple hand waving to ask people to move apart because we are walking through, sounds for recognizing animals, to the way we use our fingers to count. A press article published in the BBC site, reminded me those fun times we used to have. In the following entries I will write a short summary on the customs we used to discuss about. The current entry is the first part; it is about the sounds of animals. The picture on the left is a snapshot of a very interesting site written in Spanish (http://www.esl-idiomas.com/es/voces-animales.htm) that is by far the best on this topic. I am sure you will have as muuuuuuuch fun as I had.

Technology & daily life in Japan II

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Tecnología y vida diaria en Japón, Parte 2

Following a previous post on technology in daily life in Japan, I found another Japanese technological advance in robotics in a the video showed on a post of Paul Heney at the Engineering Exchange site. The researchers Takahashi N. and others at the University of Electro Communications have named it "Sense-Roid: Emotional Haptic Communication with Yourself". As seen in the video, the gadget can basically make you feel a hug given by yourself.

I know the idea is creepy, but let´s see how our opinion changes when those kind of devices will be integrated into your Yahoo Messenger, Skype, etc, as a form to fill the breach between families physically away due to job reasons, etc. For kids specially, this would mean something, given the importance of the family in the development of their psychics at early stages. Much to be discussed yet.

Technology & daily life in Japan, Part I

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Tecnología y vida diaria en Japón, Parte I

Once in Japan, when walking through the streets, watching their TV shows, or when visiting their stores of electronic gadgets, you will sure ask yourself "where do they get the ideas from!!!!"

I do not know how to classify this entry (it may belong to the "On the WEB" part of my blog), but I could not resist commenting on the following video posted on the BBC. It brought to me some nice memories.

Nekomimi (cat´s ears): Technology for daily life


( I assume that posting this link is legal, because the code for embedding it was available at the source)