I started to say that the first thing we did in Japan was to visit the Panasonic Center, but actually the FIRST thing we did was to eat at TGI Friday's and catch up on our sleep! The next morning, Terry navigated us on the Tokyo subway to the Panasonic Center.



They gave us a VIP tour, and it was very interesting. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

They showed us some really cool things that are not on the market yet, and unfortunately they wouldn't allow photographs of those. We saw the biggest plasma TV in the world - nine times as large as ours at home! We also saw the next generation of plasma TVs - less than an inch thick with improved resolution but using only half the energy. The thing I liked most was a huge interactive video wall where you could watch multiple channels, cruise the internet and play games all by touch.



They had a big Olympics display,



a car of the future,



and even things like dishwashers, potties and refrigerators, which I didn't realize were made by Panasonic.

They also had a display here called "Future House" where you could see all these new technologies in an actual house. It sort of reminded me of the "World of Tomorrow" ride they used to have at Disney World.



They had a hands-on science section, and just like in the U.S., there were lots of school children there on a field trip.



They also had a video game section. They had a great cafe upstairs where we enjoyed some pasta and ice cream.



We tried to explain the "Living in HD" program to our Japanese tour guides. Though they spoke English fairly well, we could tell they weren't getting it. Nathan had on his LiHD t-shirt and they had the ability to pull up the internet on their big TV in the lobby. So we had them type in the website from the back of his T-shirt. They got really excited when they saw our picture on the screen!

Panasonic News @ Yahoo! Video

This last part is a demo video they made while we were there.