Apparently yesterday there was a "spacewear fashion show" at the University of Tokyo's Hongo campus.
ENGADGET: Hyper Space Couture Design Contest features "spacewear" outfits
"Only a foreigner could make such changes, " says Yukio Noguchi, an economist at the University of Tokyo.
The executive ranks are dominated by graduates of the prestigious University of Tokyo, which normally churns out Japan's top government bureaucrats.
Eleven are now being tested by researchers at organizations such as German industrial conglomerate Bosch, Stanford University, and the University of Tokyo.
FORBES: Personal Robot For Sale. Needs Some Training. $400,000 To Good Home [Video].
Kiichi Fujiwara is a professor of politics at The University of Tokyo.
One is mild-mannered professor of education at the prestigious University of Tokyo.
NEC's Fundamental Research Laboratories and Fujio Shimizu of the University of Tokyo.
Takao Someya of the University of Tokyo has built for himself a stretchy, flexible conducting material using carbon nanotubes mixed with a polymer.
ENGADGET: Another flexible circuit project emerges, carbon nanotubes to blame
If that were the only result of Shugo Watabe's experiments on the critters, at the University of Tokyo, it would scarcely be worth reporting.
"I don't consider these works of art, but edutainment, " says Masanori Aoyagi, a vice president at the University of Tokyo and an Otsuka Museum director.
He began taking an interest while attending the University of Tokyo.
Asashima is a developmental biologist at the prestigious University of Tokyo.
Obuchi for years has cultivated the image of an empathetic politician who lacks the refinement of the University of Tokyo set that has long dominated the bureaucracy and Parliament.
Yannick Rondelez, a researcher in molecular programming at the University of Tokyo, is creating circuits in test tubes in a way that more closely resembles the operation of natural cells.
Dr Hiromitsu Nakauchi from the University of Tokyo said it was "unclear" whether this technique would help in treating HIV and that other infections and cancer may be a better place to start.
Researchers in Japan and Spain led by Eiriki Sunamura of the University of Tokyo found that Argentine ants living in Europe, Japan and California shared a strikingly similar chemical profile of hydrocarbons on their cuticles.
This week, a group of researchers led by Takao Someya of the University of Tokyo announced in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they have taken a step towards providing such a covering.
"Methane hydrate was a key cause of the global warming that led to one of the largest extinctions in the earth's history, " Ryo Matsumoto, a professor at the University of Tokyo who has spent 20 years researching the subject, told Bloomberg in December.
He has traveled extensively throughout the world giving lectures and seminars for private and government organizations, including Beijing Academy of Social Science, Nagoya University, Tokyo Science University, Keimung University, University of Adelaide, Saint Gallen University, Duisburg University, University of Edinburgh, and Athens University of Economics and Business.
Koichi Nakano of Sophia University in Tokyo points out that Japan's distorted electoral map exaggerates the size of the defeat: the DPJ lost heavily against LDP candidates in depopulated rural areas that are considered to be the opposition's heartland, but which produce a disproportionate number of seats.
Takatoshi Ito of Tokyo University, until recently a government adviser, thinks the bank should be doing much more, including making a clear commitment to targeting a positive rate of inflation.
It was therefore with considerable excitement that the conference heard from Takaaki Kajta of Tokyo University, one of the leaders of a 100-strong Japanese and American team that has been experimenting with the Super-Kamiokande detector (as it is known).
However, Takatoshi Ito of Tokyo University and Frederic Mishkin of Columbia University argue that whereas inflation-rate targets may be best in normal times, once an economy is suffering deflation there is a stronger case for a price-level target because it requires a compensating period of higher-than-normal inflation.
Professor Shuji Hashimoto, director of the humanoid robotics centre at Waseda University in Tokyo, has a theory: robots need a solid dose of those Japanese manners (don't we all?) encompassed in the Japanese word kansei, which includes feelings, mood, intuitiveness and sensibility.
ENGADGET: Japanese prof thinks robots need emotional sensibilities
Indeed, as Jeffrey Kingston of America's Temple University in Tokyo points out, Akihito has taken other actions to distance the monarchy from nationalists keen to refashion Japan's identity around the throne.
"When they write those novels, they share their secret, personal problems, and when they read by mobile phones, they can hide what they are reading, " explained Toshie Takahashi, an associate professor of media studies at Rikkyo University in Tokyo.
CNN: Cell phone stories writing new chapter in print publishing
Analyst Koichi Nakano of Sophia University, a private university in Tokyo, doubts the opposition can deliver on its pledges.
Even Takatoshi Ito, an economist at Tokyo University and long a critic of the bank, says that Mr Fukui is at last sending the right message.
"Many men are incapable of relating to adult women on an equal stance, " says Yukihiro Murase, a professor of human sexuality at Tokyo's Hitotsubashi University.
Kaoru Ishikawa, a professor at Tokyo University who died in 1989, is attributed with much of the development of the idea of quality circles.
应用推荐