DiCaprio says Japan perfect for 'Inception'

Hollywood superstar Leonardo DiCaprio (C)

TOKYO � Leonardo DiCaprio hopes his mind-warp thriller "Inception" will be a hit in Japan, which has long shown a taste for anime fantasies and surreal works by its own master-director Akira Kurosawa.

The Hollywood star was in Tokyo for the premiere of the sci-fi summer blockbuster by British director Christopher Nolan about a group of thieves who infiltrate their victims' dreams to steal their thoughts.




"This is a very surreal, multi-dimensional plot structure (which) needs ideas that don't come about from Hollywood very often," DiCaprio said.

"I'm truly excited to see how the audiences here would react to this idea," he said, crediting Japanese movie-goers with embracing new concepts such as works by animation director Hayao Miyazaki and cinema legend Kurosawa.

"I'm a huge fan of Japanese cinema, Japanese anime," DiCaprio said at a Tokyo press conference. "The Miyazaki film 'Spirited Away' has very surreal landscapes that audiences here seem to embrace and seem to love."

DiCaprio, a three-time Academy Award nominee, said his latest work stood out from what he admitted can be unimaginative Hollywood fare.

"Films that come out, especially during the summer time... seem to be a recycle from other plot structures, and this is truly unique," he said.

His co-star Ken Watanabe meanwhile lavished praise on Nolan, with whom he tied up for a second time after the 2005 film "Batman Begins", even likening him to the Italian Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci.

"I really wonder what's happening in Chris Nolan's head," Watanabe said. "He has all sorts of elements, not only literary but also scientific and architectural, with a full drive to prepare them and carry them out.

"It even makes me think he is a comeback of da Vinci."

But the Japanese actor also had a complaint to share: "The director first told me to play the role just like James Bond," he said with a stern look.

"Unfortunately he didn't have a Bond girl for me in the script."

Technology: First Brain Tissue made by Japan from Stem Cells

The Japanese researchers have once again proved why they are the most intelligent and advanced researchers in the world by making Brain Tissue for the very first time from Stem Cells.

Michael J. Fox and other sufferers of degenerative neurological diseases have new hope. Japanese scientists at the government-backed research institute Riken have created the first functioning human brain tissues from stem cells, a step in curing everything from strokes to multiple sclerosis to paralysis. Even better, there may be a chance that these tissues could come from non-embryonic stem cells, which means its research could possibly be continued in the U.S. as well.

Creating actual tissue instead of just cells is an important step since tissue transplants have a better chance of stimulating greater functional recovery in patients. For the moment, Riken researchers are still getting most of their newly minted cerebral cortices from embryonic cells, a big moral and ethical moral battleground over here. But the researchers said that they had harvested some from �induced pluripotent stem cells,� artificially made cells from adult cell cultures � like skin. If so, hopefully one of the last hurdles to growing brains has fallen

Technology: Robot will be your Cleaner

Now you don't have to worry about all those boring laundry,sweep and clean up kitchen works at your home that you have been doing for years.

Because the robot(robo-maid) developed by Tokyo University's Information and Robot Technology (IRT) cleans almost all those boring cleaning stuffs that you don't wanna do everyday.

Sure, it looks like a helpful robot strapped to a mobile toilet, but this robo-maid developed by Tokyo University's Information and Robot Technology (IRT) center won't be helping with the after birth of your Turducken dinner. Assistant Robot is domestic enough to do the laundry, sweep, and clean up the kitchen... but there are limits what its 3D sensors will respond to. Its creators claim that it can recognize when there's more laundry to do and won't be harassed from doing its task by the roar of the crowd from the television. That gives men about 10 - 20 years to get their act together before this robot could conceivably go production.