Japan loves its rice so much that the country has perfected numerous ways to quickly cook the perfect bowl of the stuff. Now that obsession with creating the perfect rice dish has extended to the current Holy Grail of technology, the smartphone.

It's easy to shut someone up with a gun. It's harder to do it reversibly. Japanese researchers have developed a non-lethal gun that uses lasers (lasers!), microphones, and a directional speaker system to fire your words right back at you, jamming your brain and keeping you from speaking coherently.

Fruit juice doesn't get much fresher than this, folks: Takara Tomy's new Gurefuru Chuchu citrus gut-mangler will scramble the insides of whatever you jam it into, leaving nothing but pure sweet juices behind.

Sometimes bootleg attempts can provide inspiration. At least that's the easiest way to explain how China launched its fake Gundam theme park two years before Japan, which just announced an official version of the robot playland.