Brain trainer

Japan Toy Show gleanings: (We're getting all this off the web, we should note, since we couldn't make the thing itself.) Another item on Sega's stand was the Brainpower Trainer, developed with Tohoku University professor Ryuta Kawashima, which forces you to repeatedly tap the answers to simple sums into a calculator-like device and points out your mistakes to the whole class when you get them wrong and makes everyone laugh at you. All right, not really. Kawashima is a popular author of several books of brain exercises, so we assume he knows what he's talking about. If we're going to be cynical about it, though, we suspect you'd probably do just as well with a Y1,000-ish book instead of this Y5,000 device if you were in the market for a cerebral tune-up.

[Via Impress Game Watch (Japanese)]