Kokenawa Inc., a startup based in Nagoya, Japan, produces the Pocketoilet, the world’s smallest portable toilet and a real life-saver when nature calls.

When you gotta go, you gotta go, but what if there’s nowhere to go? We hardly ever give the humble toilet a second thought in our day-to-day lives, but most of us could hardly imagine our lives without it. In war-torn regions and areas affected by natural disasters toilets are among the most sought-after amenities, but apart from insufficient portable toilets and unhygienic latrines, there aren’t too many options. Actually, there is also the Pocketoilet, a packet measuring 7 centimeters tall and 6.5 cm wide that can fit in virtually any pocket or purse.

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A Japanese IT engineer has created a creepy nigh lamp that crawls on robotic spider legs and leads you to the toilet in the middle of the night.

Don’t you hate when you have to answer nature’s call in the middle of the night? It’s pitch dark, you don’t know where you’re going and you don’t want to disturb the whole family by turning on the lights. Wouldn’t it be nice if a smart night lamp could light up the way from your bed to the toilet? Well, be careful what you wish for, because some night lamps can be downright disturbing. Case in point, this robotic spider lamp created by a Japanese IT engineer as a side project that has been freaking out Twitter for the past couple of days.

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Ever wish you could turn rock-hard ice cream from the freezer into soft-serve ice cream without having to wait for it to melt? Well, now you can, thanks to this bizarre-looking utensil from Japan.

Is it a fork? Is it a spoon? Is it a mixer whisking attachment? Well, it’s a little bit of all of those things. This is the アイホイスプーン (Aihoi Spoon), a special tool designed by a soft-serve ice cream lover for the sole purpose of turning hard tub ice cream into velvety-smooth soft-serve as quickly as possible. And while it may look like just a modified fork, after reading the inventor’s description, you’ll be surprised how much thought went into making the Aihoi Spoon.

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If you’re a millennial who misses the old rotary phone that was such a big part of your life growing up, the Rotary Un-Smartphone Kit may be just what you’ve been looking for.

Smartphones are cool if you like carrying a miniature computer everywhere with you, but if you only care about making calls and all the other stuff is just getting in the way, the mobile rotary phone designed by space engineer and brilliant inventor Justine Haupt is just perfect. Featuring the familiar plastic dial that most of us 90s kids grew up with, the Rotary Un-Smartphone is basically a barebone smartphone that only includes the absolute essentials that the average anti-smartphone user might like, but with a cool, retro look.

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If you’re the type of person who struggles with the classic Rubik’s Cube, you should stay far away from this “impossible” version that recently went on sale in Japan.

Designed by the wicked minds at Bandai Namco’s MegaHouse Co., the Rubik’s Cube Impossible is being marketed as the most challenging variant of the popular toy invented by Hungarian sculptor Ernő Rubik. The differences from the original are hard to identify at first glance, as the principle is exactly the same, the number of facets is identical, with the only different thing being the coloring. The difficulty of the Rubik’s Cube Impossible lies in the duality of the colors. Nearly all 54 facets are iridescent, meaning that they change color when looked at from different angles. That apparently makes it a lot harder to align all the colors, as the rules of the classic cube no longer apply.

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Inspired by the comfort of the classic dog bed, a couple of university students designed Plufl, the world’s first dog bed for humans.

If you’re thinking that the Plufl is just an oversized dog bed, you’re technically right, but according to its creators, University of British Columbia students Noah Silverman and Yuki Kinoshita, it’s also much more than that. Apparently, the Plufl was engineered “to provide the optimal napping experience” and “maximize comfort and foster a sense of security, delivering relief for those who have ADHD, stress, and anxiety-related issues.”

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Japanese beverage maker Kirin Holdings teamed up with researchers at Meiji University in Tokyo to create smart chopsticks that reportedly make food taste more savory.

Meiji University professor Homei Miyashita has been researching electrical stimulation as a way to alter the way people experience food and flavor for years. In 2016, along with fellow researcher Hiromi Nakamura, he made international news headlines for developing a revolutionary electric fork that could make any food taste saltier than it actually was. And last year, he got even more attention for his Taste the TV (TTTV) project, a lickable TV screen that could imitate the taste of various foods. Now, he’s once again the talk of the interwebs thanks to his latest invention, a pair of smart chopsticks that can allegedly make food more savory.

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A team of welders from Mazda Motor Corporation in Japan recently showed off their skill by painstakingly welding the faces of a 1mm die.

Photos of a metallic die barely visible on a person’s fingertip and a magnified up-close photos showing the elegant welding keeping all six facets together recently went viral on Japanese social media, leaving a lot of people impressed. Although you’d be hard-pressed to use this type of die in a real-life situation, the fact that people are actually capable of this sort of impressive feat is incredible. It goes to show you that nothing is impossible, regardless of how hard it is.

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A Japanese startup is trying to blur the line between reality and virtual reality with technology that allows the wearer to feel the pain experienced inside the metaverse in real life.

H2L Technologies, a Sony-backed technology company based in Tokyo, recently unveiled a wristband that dishes out small electric shocks whenever the wearer suffers pain-inducing damage in the much-hyped metaverse. The device is supposed to do a lot more than that, including mimicking a range of sensations from catching a ball to a bird pinching the wearer’s skin, as well as conveying weight and resistance. It’s all meant to make the metaverse this immersive experience that the people and companies involved in its creation have been pushing over the last year or so.

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Korean Bamboo Salt is a luxury product that can cost over $100 per 8.5-ounce (240g) jar. The price is mostly dictated by the laborious process of making it, which involves roasting it 9 times in bamboo cylinders.

If you thought pink Himalayan salt was expensive, you probably haven’t heard of actual luxury salt varieties. There are actually a bunch of them, including soy salt and pitch-black Kilauea Onyx salt, but at the very top of the list is Amethyst Bamboo, a Korean variety made by filling bamboo cylinders with sea salt, capping them with Loess clay and roasting it nine times in a traditional kiln. It’s a complex process that takes an entire month to complete. Every step is done by hand, so it’s no wonder that the salt can sell for over $100 per jar.

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The Metaura Pro claims to be the world’s first wearable air-conditioning device capable of constantly blowing cold air to keep the wearer cool.

Conventional wearable cooling systems only circulate ambient air, and thus don’t do a very good job of cooling people down. The Metaura Pro, on the other hand, allegedly relies on a portable cooling solution to produce genuinely cold air that is 7 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than that of the ambient, in fan mode, and up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than ambient air, in cooling mode. The device has a dedicated app and relies on artificial intelligence to regulate air temperature.

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Inspired by Harry Potter’s iconic invisibility cloak, these real-life invisibility shields can make anyone who hides behind them disappear into thin air.

Invisibility Shield Co. is a UK-based startup that has been working on an affordable invisibility mechanism for over two years. The company recently revealed a line of invisibility shields that rely on surprisingly simple technology to make users invisible to the naked eye. Apparently, the shield uses a “precision-engineered lens array” to deflect light from the subject sitting behind the shield away from the observer. The lenses are oriented vertically to allow light from the subject to diffuse when it passes through the shield. The light from the subject’s background is refracted towards the observer who cannot see the subject hiding behind the shield.

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Creating meat literally out of thin air sounds like technology you’d only expect to see in sci-fi movies, but according to Air Protein, it’s very real and viable.

Air Protein, the startup behind the air-based meat project, was co-founded by Dr. Lisa Dyson, an award-winning research physicist and strategy consultant, with the goal of producing meat alternatives. Such plant-based meat alternatives like Impossible Foods or Beyond Meat are all the rage these days and touted as the sustainable future of the meat industry, but Air Protein is taking sustainability to a whole new level with its air-sourced proteins. They are basically relying on a bunch of microbes capable of converting CO2 into amino-acids, with the final product being a protein-based flour that can be used to make a bunch of meatless products.

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It’s no secret that non-alcoholic beer tastes much worse than regular lager, but scientists in Denmark now claim to have developed a way of making it taste just as satisfying.

When making alcohol-free beer, either by heating it up or by minimizing fermentation, what is lost is the complex aroma of the hops. However, after decades of having to put with the flat and watery taste of non-alcoholic beer, we can now enjoy the satisfying taste of the real thing, minus the alcohol. Researchers led by Sotirios Kampranis, a professor at the University of Copenhagen, engineered a species of yeast called Saccharomyces cerevisiae to produce a group of molecules called monoterpenoids, which are found in hops.

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When it comes to dairy alternatives, we already have a lot of “milks” to choose from, but the latest alternative could prove to be a game-changer due to how available and cheap its main ingredient is.

Potato milk doesn’t sound like the most delicious thing in the world, but then again, neither does oat milk or soy milk and look how popular they turned out to be. Not to mention that this new dairy alternative is apparently “deliciously creamy” and works great for homemade lattes and cappuccinos. Plus, the humble potato uses a lot less land and resources than other plants that are currently used for milk, which makes both the vegetable and the milk more affordable.

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