Tokyo-based Princeton has announced a super-cute projector today, the so-called Toyjector [JP]. The device is sized at just 50×50x50mm, weighs 120g, comes in an extra-kawaii box and is available in either red or white.

The deal has been in the making for months now, but yesterday Panasonic finally announced a tender offer for Sanyo Electric, paving the way to convert Sanyo into a wholly owned subsidiary as early as the middle of next month.

Reactions to John Cameron’s next big movie Avatar, scheduled for release (almost) worldwide on December 18, can be called mixed at best. We’ve shown you two trailers already, and now Japan gets a third one with a handful of scenes not seen before.

Even though Dragon Ball is 25 years old, it’s still one of the most popular anime and manga series out there. There are tons of Dragon Ball-themed video games and other merchandising stuff all around the world, but Tokyo-based gourmandise [JP] today announced what seems to be relatively rare: Dragon Ball-inspired gadgets. Their so-called DRAGONBALL HEADPHONE will be available in two versions.

Yamaha launched its so-called Tenori-on, an electronic musical instrument with a built-in sound module, in 2007 for a recommended retail price of $1,200. The device, which consists of a touch screen and lets you play music by running your fingers over a 256 LED grid, is being sold world-wide, but the price is obviously a problem for many potential customers. It took a while, but today Yamaha in Tokyo announced the Tenori-on Orange [JP], which will cost less than $780 (at least in Japan).

Just in September this year, Toshiba proudly announced a 1.8-inch HDD with 160GB capacity, which was pretty impressive already (their new SSDs aren’t too shabby either). But today, not even two months later, Toshiba unveiled another 1.8-inch HDD with 320GB capacity [press release in English].

Hitachi Japan has announced a total of four new video projectors [JP] specifically aimed at businesses today. The devices will hit Japanese stores on December 21, but Hitachi hasn’t said yet if the projectors will be sold outside this country as well.

The market for video and computer games featuring erotic content, the so-called eroge, is huge in Japan. As a lot of smaller and independent software companies are battling it out in a highly competitive field, you often come across a lot of bizarre stuff (I’ve heard). School girl- or tentacle-themed games, for example, are especially popular (although the bulk of the latter are being shipped to a person called Bohn Jiggs who lives in Brooklyn/New York, as my industry contacts told me recently).

Another of those strange erotic games, called “My Boyfriend Is the President”, hit Japanese stores on October 30. The plot: Aliens brainwash the entire human population into thinking their leaders are in fact cute girls. I’m not sure what the developers were smoking, but I’m sure this game will become as big as the next Final Fantasy.

We showed you the American trailer for the upcoming Prince of Persia movie yesterday, and today Walt Disney Pictures released a new version for international audiences. This new cut is in English, totally different from the US trailer and shows a handful of new scenes from the movie.

Japan sure has a thing for weird piggy banks, as we blogged many times in the past. And now Happinet, a company belonging to the Bandai Namco group, is ready to roll out a dog-themed model. Needless to say, this one’s quite unique, too.

A new kind of material (of which currently no actual picture exists anywhere) with the consistency of pudding that hardens instantly when exposed to magnetism has been developed by a team of researchers at Japan’s Yamagata University. And once the substance, a mix between high polymer and iron oxide granules, hardens, it can become up to 500 times stiffer than plastic.

Following the GPS watch introduced last week, Tokyo-based USB gadget maker Thanko is selling another product that actually makes sense. The so-called AV Bank [JP] is being marketed as a versatile media player that can be used as a music player, photo frame, video player and voice recorder. And it’s relatively cheap, too.

Japan-based design and gadget company fu-bi has announced the so-called “Retro Cube Mini Speaker With MP3 Player” [JP] today, and as the name of the device suggests, it’s a one-unit speaker (3W×2ch) with a built-in MP3 player. You can connect it to your iPod or PC via USB 2.0 and listen to three hours of music after charging the internal battery for about an hour.

Everybody knows Japan loves them vending machines. And even though machines selling panties don’t exist over here, you can still find strange models from time to time. Case in point: A hamburger vending machine in Tokyo [JP] that sells one burger at a time because it’s operated manually.

Tokyo-based Thanko, famous for its plethora of USB-enabled gadgets that make no sense whatsoever, has announced a GPS-enabled watch [JP] today. And this device has a USB (2.0) port, too. It’s compatible with Windows XP and Vista.

Japan went crazy over the iPhone when it made its debut in summer last year, but China as another big Asian market for Apple seems to react differently. The iPhone officially launched in China today, offered by China Unicom, one the country’s three big cell phone carriers. But our friends over at major Chinese news portal 163.com are reporting [Google machine translation] that not too many people were actually queuing up to get one, at least in Beijing.

It seems VHS will never die, and this is generally welcome, as a lot of good movies aren’t still available on optical discs. In summer 2008, Panasonic released a VHS/Blu-ray combo, followed by Sharp’s Aquos BD-HDV22 that was pretty much the same thing. And today, over one year later, JVC anounced the DR-BH250 [JP], which is a VHS recorder, Blu-Ray Recorder and 250GB HDD rolled into one.

You know if a given country, in this case Japan, is over-saturated with gadgets when you see stuff like this: A remote-controlled tissue box [JP]. I mean who doesn’t know the trouble you go through when you want to wipe your nose and that damn tissue box is like 3 feet away again?

But here’s some help. The so-called Running Tissue Box has a maximum range of 8m for the radio signal. It’s sized at 250×65×123mm and is available in white, red and black.

So the rumors about Nintendo releasing a new DSi with a bigger screen (we reported Monday and Tuesday) were true. Big N officially announced a new DSi in Tokyo today, the so-called DSi LL [JP]. It has a 4.2-inch screen, will be released on November 21 in Japan and is priced at $220. Buyers will initially be able to choose between brown, red and white versions.

The Future University (cool name) in Hakodate, Northern Japan, presented the Ikabo, a giant squid robot at the Digital Contents Expo in Tokyo (that ended on Sunday). Not only is the robot tall (2.2m), cute and pretty heavy (weight: 200kg), but it also mimics your hand movements via Wii motion controllers.

Japan has produced many humanoids in the past years, but making them move in one way or the other is usually a challenge. Kyoto-based Robo Garage has unveiled Ropid [JP] today, a mini robot that runs on two legs and can jump as high as 8cm.

One of the most spectacular booths at the Digital Contents Expo in Tokyo (which ended Sunday) was the one of the Yoichiro Kawaguchi lab at the University of Tokyo. Their so-called “world’s first spherical bumpy display” can be touched by viewers to feel the surface moving and morphing.

Robots now enter the agriculture industry, too. First the award-winning rice-transplanting robot, now this: Major Japanese conglomerate Fuji Heavy Industries has developed an agricultural robot that can tend fields autonomously.

Pioneer has showcased the Floating Vision at the Digital Contents Expo in Tokyo (that ended Sunday), another 3D display that doesn’t require you to wear glasses (yawn) to view 3D images. It’s not bad at all though, even though visitors flocked to Sony’s booth to see their stereoscopic 3D display (which was a bit cooler).

You can connect the Floating Vision to a PC via USB 2.0 to view images or videos “floating” over the display (5.7 inches, 640 × 480 VGA resolution). What’s pretty cool is that you can “interact” with the image, as the device detects your hand movements. It’s also possible to “control” an image with your voice (the device has a mic on its front). Both Windows PCs and Macs are supported.

Tire maker Bridgestone isn’t the first company that comes to mind when thinking about electronic paper, but the company has been experimenting in this field for quite some time now. Today, Bridgestone claimed that it has developed the world’s first flexible e-book reader [JP]. The device, which is pictured above, uses electronic paper (instead of, say, an LCD) and will display the content on the screen even after you turn it off.