japan is the land of the rising sun it has a unique and amazing culture unfortunately japan
does face challenges and is often affected by tsunamis hurricanes and earthquakes
but even though japan faces all these problems they also come up with millions
of innovative solutions welcome to tti you are watching our japan series
where we explore the continuous japanese breakthroughs in the field of science and
technology that have a significant impact on today's society god bless you japan
looking at tornadoes on your screen can be cool
however this rotating funnel shaped cloud is extremely dangerous in real life
due to the fact that its whirling winds can reach speeds of 300 miles per hour
tornadoes can appear anywhere and anytime packing powerful winds and often leaving
death and destruction in their path the worst part is that a tornado is not always visible
until it forms a funnel cloud made up of water droplets dust and debris
to be well protected against tornadoes you have to be able to predict how powerful a tornado will be
fortunately in 1971 tetsuya fujita came up with the fujita scale which could predict the future
damage done by a tornado i could screw up all your plans because i knew your future
that's it that's how i saved them all in 2007 this scale was updated to the enhanced fujita scale
which assigns tornadoes a rating based on the estimate wind speed and related damage
the rating goes from ef-0 to ef5 or ef0 is considered less severe and ef5 is the most deadly
in the 18th century the rotating stage was developed for kabuki in japan by denshishi
nakamura don't know what kabuki is well it's the traditional and historical form of japanese drama
in which you can see people wearing strange makeup costumes and performing ancient dances
most importantly the revolving stage was created through a fusion of mythological arts and japanese
carpentry tools eventually as japanese fever also known as japanism reached europe in 1896
germany saw its first revolving stage drama at the residence theater in munich during this terrible
pandemic it's often necessary for hospitals to know the blood oxygen level of patients
and they do so using an oximeter which helps to fight against disease with the help of electronics
i want to tell you the story of the oximeter which undoubtedly has saved countless lives
many scientists attempted to create blood oximeters before the 1970s
however they were inaccurate and unreliable due to the noise produced by the continuous
pulsing flow of blood in the veins in 1971 at a japanese bioelectric company called
nihon koden two bioengineers named takuo oyagi and mishio kishi developed a device that successfully
measured oxygen saturation in blood by calculating red light versus infrared light absorption while
cancelling all other pulsating noises or errors aoagi and his colleague michio kishi got a patent
for it in 1979 and thus the modern oximeter was born and modern problems require modern solutions
if you know someone who has suffered from gastric problems like gastric bleeding
upset stomach vomiting a gastric ulcer or inflammatory bowel disease then you should
probably know who this guy is his name is mutsuo shugimura he was the japanese engineer who first
developed a gastro camera capable of identifying the root cause of gastric problems in the stomach
sugimara is the father and mother of the esophageal gastro duodenal scopy
which is a diagnostic endoscopic procedure that can see the upper part of the gastrointestinal
tract down to the duodenum without the need of surgery
this next invention is used in sports shooting games and the training of law enforcement
agencies and military units we're talking about the airsoft gun this device originated in japan
and quickly gained popularity in the western world too in the early 1970s a japanese photographer
named ishiro negata was deeply interested in guns but didn't like the violence that
could be committed using them now be careful it was a 44 magnum has quite a
kick damn that was fun so he came up with a new gun that shot plastic pellets which could not kill
those guns gained popularity and were marketed as soft
air guns however these days the guns are made of high-grade plastics and metals which make
them look very real even many police officers cannot easily distinguish them from real guns
god damn it stop that no sir no not you that's terrific really darkness is everywhere and can
often feel pretty scary especially at night luckily we have lights meet shuji nakamura
who won the nobel prize in physics in 2014 before the 1980s the world didn't have white colored leds
they were only red and green light emitting diodes but during the 1980s and 1990s shuji nakamura
isamu akasaki and hiroshi amano created the blue led by successfully handling the toxic
semiconductor gallium nitride they did so by wearing a homemade spacesuit and breathing
through a respirator in 1995 at shuji's suggestion his company developed white leds by combining red
green and blue leds these lights consume less energy which makes them better for the environment
the small energy efficient and extremely bright leds started a light revolution and are now used
in almost every piece of electronics without it much of what we use today wouldn't be possible
in the 1950s only nine percent of americans own tvs however that figure exploded to 80 percent
in the 1960s but japan was still far ahead of the rest of the world and had created a radically new
tv design which was known as the psycho tv watch the psycho tv watch was revealed in tokyo in 1982
by the japanese corporation psycho's fujimi at that time it was the world's smallest tv and
became even more popular after being featured in the james bond movie octopussy in 1983
from seiko comes the world's first ever tv watch
and in the movie octopussy james bond is never without
the it breakthrough in the classic 007 tradition
with a clear liquid at that time it was sold for 108 000 yen or 425 in japan and 495
in the us on a single charge it could play five hours continuously had a 1.2 inch liquid crystal
display screen and could receive all uhf and vhf channels via a cable to an external tv receiver
if you've seen the x-men series you probably thought magneto had one of
the coolest supernatural powers he can control and levitate any metal around him using magnets
but what if we told you about even more amazing magnets
these are known as neodymium magnets and they are even more incredible than magneto's power
because without them you wouldn't have computers cell phones or hard disk drives they're also
used in medical equipment like mri scanners in laser treatments for cancer and hair removal
without these magnets there would be no loudspeakers headphones motors or
even wind turbines the first neodymium magnet was developed by the japanese giant sumitomo special
metals in collaboration with general motors later the sumitomo facility became part of the hitachi
corporation today hitachi has more than 600 patents just for these mib neodymium magnets
next let's talk about music in a way it's everywhere in the universe
the spinning stars the flow of water the wind blowing through the leaves of a forest all of
these sounds are actually music from mother nature people love music unfortunately not everyone could
be a musician because many people either can't play or can't afford expensive musical instruments
fortunately in 1994 a well-known japanese company called yamaha introduced the first
commercially successful digital instrument yamaha vl1 which was a compact musical piano
it worked using physical modeling technology which could produce
algorithmic expressions of music without needing huge and expensive real musical instruments
this algorithmic discovery can simulate many sounds like the pluck strings woodwind
brass and more it even allows you to play music on your smartphone device with similar software
in the past audio cassettes were used to record and preserve songs and music while useful for
their time these devices used analog technologies which were slow and prone to signal errors
and loss of information while transmitting data this was a big problem but fortunately it was
solved by a japanese superhero hitara nakajima in 1971 he resigned from his post at nhk's
acoustics research and development department he then joined sony corporation where he led
sony's compact his project and revolutionized commercial digital recordings in the 1970s
and what you've just been listening to is the ultimate in recorded sound it will make all
conventional disc and cassette systems obsolete it's dust proof scratch proof digitally recorded
read by a laser and it's called the compact disc at sony nakajima pushed for digital audio
research and he was also behind the development of cd technologies unlike analog audio digital
audio allows an infinite number of copies to be made without any degradation of signal quality
because of his work you don't need to buy a cassette tape or old records to listen to your
favorite music just browse on the internet and listen to whatever you want i'll see you soon
bye-bye
you